Well, I just got my car back from the bodyshop yesterday. It was in the shop getting repaired from someone backing into the side. Since one entire side needed paint, and the other had a few dings down to the primer, and the front was well stone chipped, I decided to have the whole car repainted. And since I was having it repainted and my front fascia and one foglight were cracked from the previous owner pulling up to close to a curb, I decided to get an M5 version. When I went to pick it up I was super pleased with all of the work except the front bumper. It was one of the Euro-Spec $440 specials from the beginning of the year. I knew that some folks had had some fitment issues, and mine was no different. I bit of a funky gap, but not horrible. When I got home though, I found this:

http://www.dilysimotorsports.com/images/BMW/Bumper_003.jpg

It was really bad. Much worse than when I picked it up. I could push it in and it would stay, until I drove the car and it popped back out. The body shop was closed by the time I got home (Open on Saturday from 9-noon, not again until monday). I really wanted my car to look right, and I knew that the bodyshop could fix it, but I didn't want to wait, so I dug in.

Once I had the wheelwell liner removed, I could see the problem. There is a fairly large plastic piece that connects to the bumper, and it then slides onto a retainer that ultimately fastens the bumper to the body. I didn't get a picture of this intersection, but here is the retainer in question from someone elses pics:

http://i104.photobucket.com/albums/m185/kaptom540/bumperadjustmentside.jpg


What I found was that this intermediate piece wasn't tied very well to the bumper. When everything was pushed together it looked OK, but the bumper wanted to open up. I needed to tie the intermediate piece to the bumper. There are tabs that were mating up and positioning it, but there was no positive fastening.

I looked and saw a hole on the intermediate pice that looked like it should have a screw in it. There was no corresponding hole on the bumper though. I don't know if there was supposed to be or not, but there is now. The hole lined up with the trim, so I pulled the trim off and transfered the hole into the bumper. I then opened it up and ultimately screwed the intermediate piece to the bumper.

Transfering the hole from the intermediate piece to the bumper:

http://www.dilysimotorsports.com/images/BMW/Bumper_006.jpg

Drilling it larger to accept the needed screw: I held the trim out of the way of the bit when I was drilling, but couldn't while taking a picture.

http://www.dilysimotorsports.com/images/BMW/Bumper_005.jpg

I used a flat head wood screw to then screw the bumper to the intermediate piece. This held the intermediate piece positively in place. I then snapped the trim back on.

It was now looking fine and I bolted it all back together and as I was wrestling the wheelwell liner back into place it popped out again. Damn. Guess that wasn't all it needed.

I took it back apart and got my head up inside the wheelwell and noticed that the intermediate piece had burn marks where the locating tabs were poking through. Hmm. Burn marks on the old piece, but not the new piece. It appears that these tabs are not just for locating, but also fastening. They go through the intermediate piece and are then melted down forming a rivet head of sorts. So I got everything located where I wanted it, with the tabs pushed through where they needed to be, and then I set to melt the tabs in place. I heated a flathead screwdriver using my handy propane torch and then proceeded to use it to melt the plastic, in effect welding the bumper cover to the intermediate piece. I then let it cool.

After 15 minutes or so to insure that it was as cool and strong as it was going to get, I put it all back together again. Much better this time.

Here is the finished product:

http://www.dilysimotorsports.com/images/BMW/Bumper_017.jpg

http://www.dilysimotorsports.com/images/BMW/Bumper_018.jpg

http://www.dilysimotorsports.com/images/BMW/Bumper_023.jpg

The fit is now great. I did end up having to adjust the bracket circled in red above, but this is very simple. With the wheelwell liner removed, there are two bolts that are easily visible that hold it on (should have gotten a pic - doh). Loosen these with a 10mm wrench (no need to remove them) and shift the bracket around until the gap is right, then tighten the bolts. This part would be a simple saturday afternoon project for anyone who is not currently happy with their gap.

I don't know if the screw was necessary. I suspect that the "welding" that I did by melting the tabs is all that was needed, but it was an iterative process. On the other hand, it certainly didn't hurt anything either. The body shop did call half way through my install to ask if this was a BMW bumper or "one of those cheap aftermarket ones", so they could tell the difference. I still think that this is probably a better buy than $2K for the OE stuff, but prepare the body shop. Tell them that you know that they will have to mess with it to get the fit right, but that you are willing to pay the extra couple of hours to have it gapped right. Also - the foglights didn't plug in. Different bulbs. My body shop ended up making pigtails that tapped into the OE wiring and terminated with the right plug. No big deal, but again, something to be prepared for.

As an aside - jacking these cars up is the most irritating I've ever experinced. The only decent place for a jackstand is also the only decent place to jack. I ended up jacking the car as high as possible with my floor jack using the rear puck, and then putting a jackstand under the front puck. My jack wouldn't fit far enough under the car to lift under the engine cradle. Damn that was irritating, and contributed at least an hour to the total time required for the job. Gotta figure out a better way...

looks great! Really like the blacked out grills on the black car.

Dave,

It looks GREAT! Too bad you had to futz with the bumper, but think of it this way, the $1500 you saved payed for the hours of labor and then some.

nice work!

Brian

Dave,

... but think of it this way, the $1500 you saved payed for the hours of labor and then some.



Exactly. I'm not above getting a little dirt under my nails to save some money.

what about the other side? why did it work fine?

what about the other side? why did it work fine?

The other side is 95% fine. I got the driver's side better than the passenger's side eventually, but the passenger's side looks fine unless you are on top of it looking for an issue.

http://www.dilysimotorsports.com/images/BMW/Bumper_022.jpg

I'll probably put a little time into it at some point, but only because I'm that anal. I doubt anyone else would even see the stuff I see.

it's not hard to jack these cars up from the front if you go about it the right way. only thing is you'll need a main jack and a small helper jack to do it. place helper jack on either side front lift pad, get the front up enough to slide the main jack under the nose. you want to lift it at the point after the oil pan where the cradle comes together to make a rectangular area where there should be a small lift pad(never seen one intact, most likley you will just have a round hole there). now jack the car up to the desired height and put the stands on the frame rails(looking underneath the car they are to the left and right of the tranny). you can just put the stands on the front lift pads but makes things a bit more complicated cause you have to get the helper jack back on one to get the main jack out from under the car when you let it down, either way works fine though.

The easiest way that I've found to jack up the car is to just drive it up onto a couple of 2x4's or 4x4's. Then you shouldn't have any problem gettina jack under the center cradle.

Was the green honda in the background at an SCCA autocross in charlotte a few weeks ago?

:buttrock That looks GREAT!

I should be getting mine in from Jesse's groub buy at the end of the week. Mine is black too so you have me excited! Any plans to do the "sink drain" mod or anything else?

everything looks sweet now. out of curiosity, how much did the paint job cost you?

The bumper looks good...seems odd to me that you had that initial fitment problem, I wonder if the shop reused the plastic fasteners that attach the bumper cover to the bumper itself. In any case the end result is a good looking one.

Was the green honda in the background at an SCCA autocross in charlotte a few weeks ago?

Nope. While that is an autocross car, and Charlotte is within my traveling distance, that car is currently inoperable. I got half way through a turbo conversion and then moved into a new house. Home improvements have owned my free time since then. I hope to have it back on the scene this year though.

You might be thinking of Scott Sawyer's CRX. His is a similar color.

everything looks sweet now. out of curiosity, how much did the paint job cost you?

The repair was $2400. I paid an extra $1500 for the remainder of the car to be painted.

:buttrock That looks GREAT!

I should be getting mine in from Jesse's groub buy at the end of the week. Mine is black too so you have me excited! Any plans to do the "sink drain" mod or anything else?
whats the sink drain mod you speak of?

I purchased a low profile jack and can actually get to the front jacking point without having to do anything. But even so, the clearance is very low and if I had lower suspension it probably wouldn't work.

hey looking good. I just bought one the other day will take it to the shop to install. It doesn't look like there are any mounting hardware? Do you just reuse the stock bumper hardware or do I need to buy anyting. I want a clean install and dont' want them gluing, or whatever since I will probably return to stock when I sell the car in a few years.

I need to catch someone denting my car bigtime.

whats the sink drain mod you speak of?

Basically you place a few "sink drains" in the lower grill mesh. A couple companies make an air intake system for the M5's in which air it taken in directly from these. AA and Dinan I believe make something like this. To copy the look people literally cut-out the mesh themselves and install sink drains they buy from Home Depot to give a bit of a different look. It is mostly cosmetic but it could also open back up the port that these cars have for brake cooling.

Here is a thread about these: http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum/showthread.php?t=641312

so it's those hole in the front of some m5 bumpers i see? i as wondering what that was. Ugly as hell IMO, but to each his/her own.