Ok so I am in middle of an m7 ultimate grill installation on my Mini Cooper S 2005. I already installed the upper one. I just got the entire front bumper off, (which took a lot of time to figure out how the hell to do it), and now I am looking at the back of the middle grill.

There seems to be no screws holding it on.. only 4 intensely superglooed sections of some sort. I have NO idea how to get this thing off!

Please help!

 

This thread may help you...

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...ht=aero+grille

Goodluck

 

I replaced the body colour (indi blue) grille on my S with a chrome one, the top part is easy. that bottom slat is a bugger. it's amazing the amount of plastic on our MINIs.. but yeh I think it's just slotted and snapped in there with a bunch of glue to keep it from flapping around and working its way off...

If you don't plan on saving the original peices, I'd just be careful not to damage any surrounding area, then go ahead and tear and cut it out. your M7 grille has fasteners to hold it in so I wouldn't think you'll end up gluing things in the same place anyway...

Not sure if it will help, but when I needed to replace one of the wheel well arches on my MINI, I found they are snapped-in with plastic fasteners, I just took a flat screwdriver to it and they popped off very easily without hurting the paint underneath..

Good luck

 

It is a pain, but you just need to get the plastic pins to pop out. The body colored plastic piece (inside the chrome) is backed with adhesive, so you will need to pry that piece off. Once you get the chrome and the body colored piece off, You will probably want to paint the plastic that will behind the grill. You can also remove the plastic (with a dremel or a sheetrock knife) to give more airflow to the radiator. If you do this, you will want to test fit the grill so that you know where the mounting pins go. This way you can cut around these points so the grill will attach to the bumper. Another thing you should do if you go this route is to paint the metal bumper behind the plastic bumper flat black.

If you do it right, this is it it will look right:

 

Thanks guys for the info. I finally finished it, and it looks awesome!! I did paint the part behind the grill for both the top and the bottom. It turned out to look really good.

Damn the middle grill is a bugger. I had to take off the entire front bumper (about 1 hour of figuring out how in the hell to do it and finding the tools for it). 15 minutes searching the net to figure out how to get the middle grill OFF. Probably 1+ hour taking the grill off. (That DAMN double sided tape hahaha. It was amazingly hard to scratch off). Then painted it, then put on the grill, then re-mounted the front bumper.

All for a tiny little grill .


But it looks amazing. The entire ordeal was well worth it. I am getting a carbon fiber hood scoop on monday or so, once I install it I'll show you all some pics.

 

Can;t wait