front bumper and grill balcony job

[525i winter driver]

while i was fixing the wiring i figured i'd do a paint job too

here's a couple of before pics

[Dave M]

head on collisions with 1,000,000,000,000 bugs

[525i winter driver]

i bought a new grill from qube (thanks man, i hope you don't mind i painted it with a brush!)

as a temporary solution for my working but smashed foglights, i used some faux-leather that came with some cheap seat-covers, i think the pieces were supposed to be for the armrests that i don't have.

here's some 'getting there' pics...

[525i winter driver]

head on collisions with 1,000,000,000,000 bugs

... and rock salt ... and a brick wall not so long ago...

here's what it looks like now after 2 days and a 1/4 litre of tremclad...

not perfect, but if it was perfect the rest of the car would look really bad i think.

[BMWDriver]

Big improvement ! Smart solution for the fogs !

I just attacked my sunroof with Tremclad too. Rust Stop first though (acid). Now I have to wait until tomorrow to put it back on before the paint is workable. There was rust all around the rubber.

A real pain in the a... to remove the roof; it's normally easy enough, but ... I'll start a thread tomorrow with pics before I kidnap this one.

[Dave M]

Yeah, big improvement. If the rust starts working its way back out of the metal grille, try again with a good primer/rust inhibitor under the final coats. Also, I'm sold on POR-15 products as they've held up for quite a while on some rusty a$$ jobs.

Was it easy to remove the plastic vertical grilles inserts (kidney bits) from the metal grille? I looked at mine when I had the main grille out and it didn't appear 'self- explanatory'.

Anyhow, great job on a balcony and a budget,

Dave

[525i winter driver]

thanks guys, i wasn't going for the showroom look i'm glad you understand - i would have used por-15 if there had been any rust but the grill was new and there was no rust on anything - i still used a rust-check primer tho... this was all mostly for practise for when i do touch ups on the body because i really don't want to screw the schwarz up ... i think i should redo the grill schwarz too but tremclad will do for the bumpers i think and you can practically buy it at the corner store.

by kidneys you mean these shiny things dave? i never had them man i was so psyched to get these new ones on but they won't stay... further investigation leads me to believe i need a new centre grill (part 8) which i have ordered from pelican parts for $10 or so i think... note the little bars that i think hold the tabs on... i thought about gluing them but then i'd be stuck with tremclad forever on the grill, maybe that's what someone did to yours - the black stuff is just a foam backing.

[Sam-Son]

fix that baby up for the meet

[Dave M]

Yep, thats exactly what I'm referring to. The 'chrome' rings attach to the black grille pretty tight on mine. Now that you've shown me pics of the tabs, I may have a better chance at pulling it apart without breaking something.

Thanks and good luck with everything,

Dave