[Kwajtrader]

Impressive job!

[WOT Bimmer]

Originally Posted by stlcdr

Definitely an excellent job!

Did you have a manual or any kind of reference material?

A lot of follow up questions of course: parts you purchased, was the bumper already painted, any tricky parts, aligning the bumper...

No manual - it is more straightforward than you would think. I’ve also removed bumper covers in the past, which helped.

There are about 20 screws in total along the bottom, center (behind the grills), top, and sides. Once all screws are removed, the bumper just pulls out. The wiring harness for the sensors gets disconnected on the driver side. Each side marker also gets disconnected.

The photo below shows where the screws that need removed are located.

As for parts, I ordered the OEM bumper painted from a shop in Colorado (paintedoemparts). They did a fantastic job. All plastic grills, etc. can transfer from the old bumper given patience to work the plastic clips out. However, you will need new side markers as those are one time use (glued on).

That’s just a brief summary. Let me know if you want to know anything more specific.

All in all I spent $1800 on the bumper, $230 on plastic pieces that were damaged and not reusable, and $60 for the side markers. My deductible was $1500 but the car would have sat at a body shop for 3-5 weeks unusable and I would have gone through insurance hell. I’m happy with the decision to spend a little more and work at my own pace.