So I just received my m7 upper/middle grill. I cannot figure out how to remove the old grill!! I called peter and he told me about some bolts or something holding it in place, ( I cannot for the life of me find them). I am a complete newb when it comes to this stuff so if anyone could post a "How to" or PICTURES of how to take it off.. that would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

(2005 mini cooper S)

 

Well. There are little black nibbins, that need to be "Popped off" Just stick the screw driver between the bolt and washer.

As to the finding them situation. Pop the Bonnett. Then look directly behind the upper grill there should be 6ish on the bottom, and 4ish on top. They are little black crappy looking nubs with bad knuts, and plastic washers on them.

 

Sorry for the poor quality of this diagram:



It shows you the locations of the 11 nuts holding the grill when you open the hood. They are each a black plastic tab that a nut screws onto.

You now have two options. If you don't care about saving the old grill, slip a cutter (like diagonal cutter or box cutter knife) underneath each nut and cut off the tab. Cutting off all of the tabs will go pretty quickly and the grill will come off.

If you want to be able to sell or reuse the old grill, you have to remove each of the nuts while doing as little damage as possible to the tabs. The trouble is that the nuts are not really designed to be taken off or the grill to be reused, and you have to do it carefully. It took me about an hour to get all the nuts off with very minor damage to the tabs. I slid a putty knife under the nut to provide upward pressure and used a 10 mm socket (from a socket wrench set) to twist the nut.

 

Thankyou soo much. I was confused by what peter said on the phone, I thought he was talking about some other screws. Thanks for the help guys.. I'll try it out tomorrow!

 

Ah haha, well I got antsy so I took it off tonight.

It went well.. I was sort of confused by what you guys meant by the "black tabs"? My dad figured out you can basically rip off the screws, (they are plastic). So I took off the grill and it went well, but my dad suggested I paint the part underneath on the hood black so that it would blend better.

Tomorrow Im gonna go pick up some black paint and attempt to do this.. wish me luck!

 

good luck