When I bought the car, the one area that let it down was the front end. I mentioned the stone chips in my First Impressions post, but actually the left hand kidney grille was cracked quite badly.
At this point I hadn't taken the grille out of the bumper, so wasn't aware what lied beneath. I could only see that the chrome outer ring had cracked and partially come away from the main grille moulding.
My plan was to buy a brand new genuine BMW grille but, at around £50 it wasn't the cheapest option, however, would guarantee a perfect part. As nothing is ever simples, it turns out there are a bunch of different styles of grille, and I happened to order the wrong one. Oh Joy. Mine are chrome with chrome fronted fins, the one I ordered was chrome with black fins.
The correct part number for the LH chrome grill with chrome fronted fins is 51137157277.
Moving on, I stumbled across a pair of grilles on eBay, used but from the pictures, in good condition. I messaged the seller and struck up a deal, £35 posted for the pair! When the grilles arrived I was pretty chuffed, they were in really good condition. Now just to fit them.
As it's not exactly obvious how you remove the E92 kidney grilles, I'll use this as a bit of a How-to guide to removing them.
First off, open the bonnet and remove the air ducts. You'll need a Torx driver, some pliers and a trim pulling tool. Use the Torx driver to remove the two screws holding the duct to the chassis. Grab the pliers and remove the two centre pips from the middle of the plastic fixings.
This bit was quite tricky, the fixings did not want to budge on my car. Inch the fixings up enough to get your trim puller underneath and lever them out, if they wont budge, shuffle the trim puller to a different side of the fixing and keep persevering.
The two duct holes you are left with you'll need to reach your hand into and feel for the clips on the back of the grille moulding. Depress the clips (3x top, 2x bottom, 1x outboard side) and the grille should come away from the bumper.
It was also at this point I could see that my bumper was damaged too, 3 of the clip slots were snapped and wouldn't keep the grille in place. Simply fitting the new grille wasn't an option.
The clips are formed in the mould of the bumper, so the material is only 2-3mm thick, just gluing the clips back together wouldn't hold. Next option was cut out the local area of each clip and bond in a replacement.
Initially, I thought of using sheet metal, but my Dad found some plastic material that would be perfect for the job. We took some measurements and made a template, the clipping holes needed to be exactly in the right place or the grille wouldn't clip home. This meant the depth of material had to be the same too.
After quite some time honing the infill parts to the right shape, we set about bonding them in. They took a little tweaking once bonded in, but they fit great.
Moment of truth time, new grille in hand I offered it up and pressed it into place.
Spot on!
In actual fact, the fit was so good, it was better than stock, it certainly wont be dropping out anyway.
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