DIY: Remove/Replace front bumper and refurbish lower grille doityourself

[JupiterBMW]

Alright everyone, I feel the need to donate to the forum, and recent work led me to believe that we need this DIY... Firstly, I hear of too many people with complaints of the lower grilles turning white. Also, being able to take the front bumper off helps with a lot of other jobs, so I figure this writeup will pose useful... Anyway, on to the job!

1. Ideally, jack up the car to give yourself more room to work and help relieve strain on your back.

2. In each fender well, just in front of each front wheel, you'll see two 8mm bolts. The outer one needs to be removed on each side. Two bolts in total.



3. On the under side of the bumper, there are two more 8mm bolts (on each side). Both of these need to be removed. The first one is in the small hole in the outer bumper cover (upper middle of the photo) and the other one is where the tab is (mine is already removed, lower middle of the photo). Take both of these out, on both sides, four bolts in total.



4. Now comes the fun part. The big bolts. Holding the actual bumper on (the metal parts that's under your fancy M-tech bumper cover) are two large bolts. They actually have an external Torx head, but I didn't have the right torn socket. Instead, I found that a 6 point 10mm socket works just fine. That being said, there are two of these bolts. You access them from the underside of the bumper. There are large holes in the underside of the bumper. If you look up into those holes, you'll see the bolts. (This is where jacking up the car helps). In the following pic, you can see the holes, just on the inside of my splitters.



5. You will loosen these bolts until they fall loose a little bit (you'll feel them rattle around a little) but they won't fall completely out. The reason for this is because the plastic guides for these bolts have small tabs on them to hold them in place. You have to get a hold of the bolts and actually pull on them to pull them past the small tabs. Once you do this, they will come completely out. Here's the tough part... Even my long reach needle nose pliers weren't able to get up there and grab the bolts. I found the next easiest thing was to push in fairly hard on the lower grille, at the outside edges of it. If you press the sides in until they pop off the tabs, you'll be able to see inside the bumper and see the big bolts, RIGHT there. Then you can just reach in and grab them and pull them down, letting them fall out of the bumper. The following pics show these bolts, the plastic guides with the little keeper tabs, as well as their location in relation to the lower grille.

[JupiterBMW]

Here are more pics showing the main bumper bolts and the plastic guides with the little keeper tabs...









6. Ok, so now that you have those big bolts out, the bumper is essentially ready to come off. But don't get too wild. You need to pull it off slowly and carefully as there are still things to consider. Firstly, there is the trim piece under the headlights. Be careful of this. Once you clear both sides of the headlight trim, you have to not pull too far. Carefully slide one side out at a time, just enough to disconnect two connectors on each side. One is for the fog lights, the other for the horn. Once you get all four connectors unplugged, the bumper should be able to come off. Ideally, you'll want to have a blanket or towel on the ground. Make sure to lay the bumper on the face. If you try to set it down on the bottom, the weight of the reinforcement bumper underneath will cause it to flip over onto its face. Set it down like mine is in the previous post...

7. From here, you'll now see all the little plastic tabs that hold the lower grille on. One by one, pop them out and remove the grille backing piece as well as the lower grille. I used some semi-gloss black paint and gave them MANY coats of paint.

Once you're done, installation is, as they say, the reverse of removal... .

This was my result... Very pleased!

[danewilson77]

Nice writeup Joop.

Thanks.

Sent from the HTC DNA, Williamsburg, VA and USA

[JupiterBMW]

Anything I can do to help! When we (myself, rando, and William) first did this on William's car, the only writeup we found didn't have the best pictures (not that mine are much better) and it wasn't on a ZHP bumper, so it was a little different...

Oh, and just FYI to all reading this... Its the same for coupe/vert and sedan! Good luck folks!

[Hermes]

Great job!

It's funny, I've been thinking of doing a DIY on this for a while. Trying to figure out how to get mine off were the reason for my first posts ever on this forum!

on num 2 - where you just removed the two outer screws, I removed all of them and took the whole wheel liner out. You can then easily disconnect the fog lights and maybe the horns (don't remember). On the bottom of the drivers side liner is the temp sensor, be careful with that.







one last thing - Jon, in the pic you posted for num 3 you're likely missing the expansion rivets that hold the rear of the bumper to the front of the drip pan. I forget pn but they're cheap

[Tnhl1989]

Looks awesome. Possibly do that at the reunion as well

[wertyu78]

Where was this 2 hours ago?! I started looking at my bumper and how I should approach the removal and gave up. I told myself I could remove the grille from the bumper to plasti-dip without removing the bumper.... and I somehow did it!


Thank's for the right up. I'll be sure I use it when I start the body work on the ZHP.

[JupiterBMW]

one last thing - Jon, in the pic you posted for num 3 you're likely missing the expansion rivets that hold the rear of the bumper to the front of the drip pan. I forget pn but they're cheap

Ah yes, I didn't think about that as I don't seem to have that plastic drip pan, and on second thought, William's car didn't have it either. Good catch tho!

Looks awesome. Possibly do that at the reunion as well

Sure thing. I can definitely help with that... You'd be surprised, but the whole process takes about 20 minutes or so once you know where the bolts are...

[Jorge86]

Can u give me a part number and brand you used for the paint please.

[JupiterBMW]

Jorge- I just went to the local Walmart and picked up a can of Krylon Fusion paint... Its the one recommended for plastics. Honestly, it probably doesn't even matter that much. The key to successful spray paint is technique. Even spray, slow but steady movements. Stop the spray at the end of each pass. 6-8" distance when spraying. Spray in different directions. Many thin coats is better than one thick coat...

Good luck buddy!