Soo, I read the post on here about how you can do this swap with the right tools and taking off the shields and such, but not the bumper. Well let me tell you after doing this install. THIS IS NOT POSSIBLE. I don't care how small your hands are, or what special tools you have. I have been working on BMW's for 20 years and you're not getting these out without the bumper off.
I got all these parts off before I realized that this just wasn't happening.
So I found a trust image of the bumper and how it all goes together
HERE. and I then went ahead with the mission.
Let me show you the first problem, looking at the back of the bumper. The exhaust trim is held in by 3 8mm bolts and a clip. Circled in red, then the carriage that floats the exhaust trim is held on by two more bolts in the squares, and then two plastic rivets on the bottom portion of the bumper.
Well if you could somehow get the 3 bolts off of the actual trim piece, you would then have to remove the two other bolts for the carriage as the only way to remove the trim is to pull back the carriage from the top and then angle and wiggle the trim out the backside of the bumper...
Ok so onto the DIY for this.
1. Remove the left and right flairs. This is done staring on the forward part of the flare and the rear door. You start at the bottom edge and pull outward, then you pull up and around releasing each of the clips as you go.
2. There is one bolt on each side under where the flairs were.
3. There is a piece on each side in the trunk area that you can grab by the softer top potion and pull towards you.
4. This will reveal these bolts.
5. Lastly, you need to pull out the reflectors, this is done by grabbing the larger portion of red exposed on the trunk side of the reflector and pull towards you. Inside there is a bolt.
6. Now all the bolts are removed and you can start to pull the bumper off. nothing underneath needs to be removed for this. I started with pulling on the sides of the bumper at the bottom of the flair area, and started pulling out the clipped sections one by one. Here you can see all of the locations the tabs grab so you know where to try to release. A flat panel paper made some of these easier to release.
7. Once the side wings are free you can work on releasing the 4 main tabs and the trunk edge, and then it should come free, there are some additional tabs that run down from the tail lights to the bottom opening of the trunk that do have to pop out.
To release these I did this with my panel popper.
8. You need to be ready to unplug this plug on the passenger side.
9. Once you have the bumper off you need to remove these 5 bolts.
Do the other side and then reverse the process. I taped up the edge of the rear quarter panel under the lights to protect during reassemble. But really everything goes back together like it came apart. Using a closed fist to hammer the tabs back in place.
Don't forget to plug the plug back in like I did. Luckily I still had the shelling from that side out, so I was able to plug it in with the bumper on.
I also made a quick mask with cardboard and sprayed the tips with some black high temp spray paint to hide them a little more.
[IMG]
[/IMG]
And of course, some completed pics.
And here's a shot of the Ebay shadow line front grill with my custom white vinyl separator stripe down the middle.
Thanks, D