Part Numbers:
51-13-8-091-295, GRILLE,FR
51-13-8-091-296, GRILLE,FR
Pricing:
Somewhere between $79 and $130 a piece (depending on discount)
Tools:
- Set of plastic trim panel removal tools (
example)
- Microfiber towels
- Super fine screen cleaning cloth (similar to what you would get for a cell phone, etc).
Time:
< 1hr
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They finally handed over the extended black trim bits and pieces for the M40i, but it didn’t go nearly as smoothly as I had hoped. My issue was that I didn’t want to install them myself this time because of the comparatively small openings in the grill and unknown complexity related to the weird active cooling vents in front of the radiator. Long story short, the mirror caps were painted the wrong color (black vs black sapphire) and they weren’t as prepared to install them as I was led to believe.
The car was going to have to spend the night at the dealer AND they didn’t even know if they could do it because there was a “special” tool, made specifically for removing the grills on the G29 that they didn’t think they had yet. Then they said it would be a little over $400 to do the install… That, combined with everything else left me pretty irritated and driving home with a bag of parts.
So, for posterity, here’s my guide to swapping them out if anyone else wants to do it themselves. Spoiler alert, you don’t need a super-secret special tool.
The service tech did give me their internal guide for replacing them, shown below. The only real value that I found with it, was that it largely looked straightforward, didn’t have any weird steps involving the radiator and the crude depiction of the tool didn’t look like anything that was “necessary”, but its part number is included if anyone wanted to get one.
The first thing I did, was to lay out the new grills adjacent to the existing ones to see where the tabs were. I found it easiest to simply count out the rows/columns of the grill pattern to figure out where to start.
The overall process involves using a thin trim removal tool in between the perimeter edge of the grill and the front facia, pressing down once you’re in to depress the 9 tabs located on the grill. The tabs are all situated such that they must be pressed inward to the grill to release (image below).
The order that I did them in is shown below. Only the 1st and last seemed to be important, with the first being the easier one to get disengaged and the last being a pain on both sides.
As you can see in the pic below, I placed the small screen cleaning / lens cleaning cloth onto the tip of the trim removal tool before inserting into the split to minimize any chance of scratching. It seemed to work pretty well.
Once you get them going, you’ll find yourself with the upper tabs all released while you continue to work on the lower tabs – particularly that last tab. When you’re doing that, I recommend taking a couple regular micro fiber rags and wedging them between the grill and the body panel since the backside of the grill can scratch the paint if you not careful as you work out the last few tabs. Luckily, I noticed the contact before anything got scratched.
For reference, here are the two openings without grills attached.
Once you get the grills out, its worth cleaning out the opening to make sure that theres not small stones, grit, whatever that might rub when installing the new grills.
Inserting the new ones is pretty straight forward – just line up the tab locations and apply light pressure at each tab point until you hear/feel it click into place.
All done.
