Okay, some photos from my bumper removal. This is the bumper clips before swapping them over, not nice, wide / wobbly panel gaps :
As said elsewhere, when removing the bumper it is very important to pull the edge up before pulling out as this helps to unclip the edges on the underside. Here is the state of my clip on the driver side (the passenger side was worse) :
Clearly broken, but in case you didn’t notice (the 'clip' you can see sits behind the wing mounting and stops the arch liner and the arched edge of the bumper moving when it is all together) :
Getting these out without a proper trim removal tool is a b1tch as there are 3 or 4 feck off big clips that it is impossible to push from the inside without taking the wheels of and getting right inside the front of the arch. Having Eibachs and spacers doesn’t help,
so I had to break them up very gently using a pair of snips to cut through the plastic and a small screw driver wrapped in cloth. When doing this you need to be careful not to bend the metal of the wing out of shape round the clip holes otherwise the new ones won’t sit flush. Here is what was left of the old clips when I was done :
New clips in, you can see it looks they have changed the design and added some strength by completely surrounding that bolt above the light fitting... It may have been broken on the old one but I didn’t think so when I had a look :
All back together – not perfect (maybe I bent the fitting holes a little...), but much, much better :
As said elsewhere, when removing the bumper it is very important to pull the edge up before pulling out as this helps to unclip the edges on the underside. Here is the state of my clip on the driver side (the passenger side was worse) :
Clearly broken, but in case you didn’t notice (the 'clip' you can see sits behind the wing mounting and stops the arch liner and the arched edge of the bumper moving when it is all together) :
Getting these out without a proper trim removal tool is a b1tch as there are 3 or 4 feck off big clips that it is impossible to push from the inside without taking the wheels of and getting right inside the front of the arch. Having Eibachs and spacers doesn’t help,
so I had to break them up very gently using a pair of snips to cut through the plastic and a small screw driver wrapped in cloth. When doing this you need to be careful not to bend the metal of the wing out of shape round the clip holes otherwise the new ones won’t sit flush. Here is what was left of the old clips when I was done :
New clips in, you can see it looks they have changed the design and added some strength by completely surrounding that bolt above the light fitting... It may have been broken on the old one but I didn’t think so when I had a look :
All back together – not perfect (maybe I bent the fitting holes a little...), but much, much better :
