Hey guys. I know this is more of a "its up to you" decision but i was wondering if i good get some thoughts or opinions on the subject.

My stock bimper for my 05 mcs recently got mangled in a little accident. The only thing dammaged was the bumper so i was thinking now would be a good time for a change.

I love the Aero kit untill it comes to the back bumper, so id be getting all of it but im still not sure about the rear. To be honest, its the decels for the grills. Now i did see that someone drilled everyhole out and that seemed like a good idea to me but do you guys think its worth it?

My other option would be another stock bumper with m7 Grills (as i will be getting the front ones). But the one thing i didnt like about the stock one was that you could see the muffler's alot. Would you be able to see a alta one sided muffler? Totally different question but that looks like the exhaust im going to be getting and id love to just see the tips with a stock bumper.

I know its real opinion based but thats what im looking for. Anything will help. Thanks!

 

I like the stock rear bumper better than the Aero tho I do like the front and side skirts on the Aero kit. My rear grills are drilled out and with the Milltek you don't see the mufflers at all. 2cents.

 

If you have the time a patience I like the idea of drilling the holes out. Even better if it isn't painted yet.

 

Any one know if i could get my hands on a GP? and can those grill/plastic peices come out? Does it come painted GP color? thanks again guys

 

I ended up buying some CF inserts from Pete at minspeed.net for my Aero kit rear bumper. The factory stickers were way too cheesy for my tastes. I really wish they would have done something similar to the factory bumpers - an actual cutout and an insert that snaps in there.

 

Yea i know. They really didnt think. But i do like the GP but i dont like the plastic peices where the grills would be.

 

I went through this same dilemma when I bought the full Aero kit !

After buying the factory painted Aero kit for my 05, I went back and forth as to wether I liked the look of the rear bumper. I felt it was a bit too "boy racer" for me ! LOL ! I installed it for about a week and I then took it off and remounted the OEM bumper. After a few weeks with the OEM bumper back on, I felt the car looked out of place and miss matched with the Aero front bumper and side sills, I then went ahead and re installed the rear Aero bumper. It took a week or two but it seem to complement the rest of the kit and the look of my car. The only other way I would have done it would have been just to install the front Aero bumper and leave the side sills and rear bumper stock. The OEM side sill seem to go with the stock rear bumper.

The stickers don't really bother me right now but, I've seen pictures of a car with the inserts cut out and replaced with some type of "functional" screen. The screen gives a very clean look and of course is how it should have been done in the first place ! There IS a company that sells screen inserts but, I myself don't really care for there design. They look as bad if not worse then the stickers. The picture I saw looked to be a "one off" custom !

 

Thanks for the info! and sweet car. But i want to take a look at those screens if you have a link or picture to them. Because i personally would hate those stickers so id probably do anything to not have them. Thanks again.

 

This is the picture I was talking about. More than likely, this is what I'm planing on doing at some point !


Here is another option some are going for although not one that I would use. I don't care for the look of the grills shown here on ether of the rear bumpers !


These can be found at a site called http://www.pfyc.com/mm5/merchant.mvc...ffiliate=yfeed
Drilling the 999 holes might also be considered ! Also, depending on what color your car is, you might just run without the stickers. I tried that at first with my car but because of the color (Pepper White), it just didn't look right and needed something to give the bumper some detail. I've seen a Chili Red Mini with the area painted black and from the pictures i saw, it looked really nice !

 

Hmmm, i agree with theose second set of pics, nasty. lol. But i love the first one. Maybe ill just do it and get the aero kit. If worse comes to worse i could go for the hole drilling. lol.

Id love to do what your planing on doing, Do you know how your gonna go about doing it? Maybe send M7 an email.

 

The main reason I re installed the Aero bumper was that I noticed that the side sills were so much lower than the stock bumper. It just didn't look right to me ! I would have remounted the OEM side sills if I was to have kept the OEM rear bumper and just ran with the front Aero Bumper. I'm quite happy with the look of the whole package now ! As I said before, the OEM bumper looked out of place with just the Areo front and side pieces.

As far as installing the mesh ? Not sure as to how to go about it yet. I plan on asking around. That mod is in the future though and I have no desire to tackle that now ! The stickers just don't bug me very much and I'm VERY happy with the look of Boo at the moment ! I guess on my car (PW/B) the decals just don't stick out as much as on some other colors and to me, they don't distract from the look of my car !

 

Yea it still looks good. haha

 

We used black sign vinyl here:



Just cut it to fit, and stick it on. This has been on for almost two years.

Melissa did this:



She had them cut out of sheet metal and then she dremeled out the area on the bumper where the holes were. She then used double sided tape to stick them on. She had to spray the muffler heat shield black so it wouldn't shine through.

There are a couple of more ideas here:

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...d.php?t=141041

 

I prefer the aero bumper, and I'd advice you to cut the holes and place real grills there instead of the oem stickers, I agree that those aren't so good-looking...

 

Much agreed MINI driver85, Could you shed some light on how you did yours ? Pictures would be helpful. I'd like to see up close how much material was left on the edges to hold and mount the grill material in place. The car in the picture taken by Octainguy is how I'd like mine to end up.

 

batrugger: How exactly did you do that rear bumper?

 

The red or the black car? The red one is just black sign vinyl cut to fit using the aero stickers as a template. The black one was done by having the metal cut from sheet metal by a machine shop and then the rear bumper was dremeled out leaving about an inch of flat space around the hole. The piece was painted black as well as the heat shield, and then the metal pieces were stuck on using double sided tape

 

But how did you get a smooth finish? Did you pull the honeycomb material out of the bumper first? Is there a flat surface behind it?

 

The area in the Aero rear bumper that the grills are in is actually a flat plastic part of the bumper. The honeycomb is just a sticker that is applied. I bought mine and installed it myself so i never put the stickers on it. It was smooth and red.

 

That looks cool. It really helps the aero.

Longboard

 

Here is mine with powder coated grills. Got then on eBay cheap. I love how I can see the polished Magnaflow mufflers through them.

Longboard

 

I would be glad to but I haven't done it yet. It's still on my list of mods to do

 

Thats a good example of what id do if i got another stock. Does anyone have pictures of aero kit side skirts with a stock bumper? Id like to see if its really bad to my eye or not. Thanks for all the replies guys its really helping me out hahah.

 

I like pimpin Melissa's rear end

 

There are pictures of some with the aero side skirts with an OEM rear bumper but you'll need to use the search files.