So I decided to tackle the ol' "aero-grill-on-a-stock-mcs-bumper" mod yesterday afternoon.

Here's what my car looked like stock (this was probably less than a month after delivery)



I bought the parts from outmotoring.com for $88 + a few bucks in shipping. It came in two days which was quite a surprise.

Anyways, everybody was saying that replacing the upper part (attached to the bonnet) was EASY.

It wasn't.

It was annoying. The cheap self tapping 10mm nuts are really annoying to get off and I actually had my boss from work help me out with the install!

You'd think that BMW/MINI would have a better solution that just a crummy plastic bolt (not even a bolt - just a straight plastic post) and crummy self tapping hex nuts. I mean cost savings is one thing, plain stupidy is another.

And putting them back on was kind of annoying too because I only had my 10mm socket wrench - and it was way too deep to be able to provide pressure while putting the 10mm nut back in! So I had to use my finger and good thing for me that I am thick skinned or else I would have cut myself for sure.....

Next up was the lower grill.

Removing the bumper has been covered many times and it is very easy. Anybody who has done it once can do it again with the eyes closed in my opinion.

Once removed, I had to use a pair of pliers to pry away the glue/adhesive that held the chrome surround in place. This was very easy.

Removing the single body colored (PS for me) slat required quite a bit of force as it is held on by double sided sticky tape.

I didn't really bother with cleaning up the tape residue as I figured the paint (black matte spray paint) would pretty much hide it unless someone was exmining it from 1" away.

I just followed along with what I've read and removed about 1/4" all around from the aero grille. This part took quite a long time as I was using a dremmel and had to avoid burning melted lumps of shaved off aero grille every so often. I'm no expert at dremmeling and I suggest that anybody who has two left hands not attemp this mod for sure.

The left side of this pic shows how much I remvoed where as right of tab has been untouched.



In the end I decided not to remove the "louvers" that held the original body colored slab in place. It looked to me as if it was going to fit.

I decided to drill into a bumper following instructions I had gotten from outmotoring.com. At the end of the pdf, there's an addendum from Paul Giers that made a lot of sense. Keep the tabs and measure the distance between them: on the upper part it's 5.5", lower part it's 5.125" (5 1/8"). He suggested that a 1/2" space would be needed width wise for each tab so I followed his instructions and measured out 3/8" on either side of my original spacing.

Using a 1/8" drill bit, I made the initial spacing holes in the bumper for the tabs and angled the bit to extend the space to 1/2".

I ended up spray painting the bumper before I drilled.....two coats.....and after drilling, fitting, marking, and so forth, decided to paint it again as I had scratched it up a bit.

Here's two pics of the bumper - painted and up close. This is after the 2nd coat. After the 3rd coat, all the parts I missed in the 1st two were covered up.....





After snapping the aero grill in place, I noticed that the louvers were putting a little pressure on the grill and made the bottom portion of the grill stick out ever so slightly. In the end it turns out I probably should have removed these louvers. Then I probably would have painted the actual bumper on the car since it's silver.... I also didn't have to use any glue as the tabs were holding the grill in place firmly.

Athis point I was kind of tired already so I decided not to go any further. I had spend the time waiting for the paint to dry by finishing up my audio install with new crimps ( I had used bare wire before - don't ask me why).

One last thing - I noticed that with the aero grill in place that I couldn't use the stock license plate mount. It would cover part of the grille and also it simplyh didn't fit!

So I decided to drill into my plates to use the factory mounts....Then I decided to drill into the bumper again and use the plate holes already there....so now my plates are attached with only the slim plate cover and 4 screws along the top edge. Compare the plate location to the original pic above.

Here's a couple of pics showing the finished product.

 

Yoda would be proud - The end result looks great!

 

Amen and thanks for the detailed post!!

 

Here's mine

 

Nice JennB,


Did you remove the louvers? I can't tell from the pic. Any other suggestions/issues you might have?