Shut lines

[Martin Sullivan]

Hi all

I’m in the process of trying to get my shut lines looking as close and even as is sensible.
The front bumper, headlights and bonnet are proving to be a faff. Part of the problem is not having a comparison.

Could people post a few pictures of their front ends showing how they look. I’m especially interested in how close it all would have been from the factory.

Any tips are also appreciated

thanks
Martin

 

[Woodsta888]

Good question. The back of the wife's Z3 has been off for at least 12 months, plus the cills. Any datums would be good, or a known design gap specification.

You had your panels off, or just feel they've matured on their fixings?

 

[Martin Sullivan]

@Woodsta888 both. I was never happy with the way the front bumper or bonnet sat. The rear bumper had a slight drop on one side.
I’ve had just about every panel off. The quarter panels have gone on well. The front panels
line up pretty well with the bonnet but I’m just not overly happy with the rest.

Ive reinstalled and adjusted the four bonnet bump stops inside the engine bay. I wound them all down a fair way to begin with. I closed the bonnet and pressed down around the stops until I felt a bit of play. I’ve then wound each one out until this play is removed and the bonnet feels tight.
Not sure if that’s correct but it seemed logical.

my plan was to then try and align the front bumper to the bonnet and then align the headlights in the space that’s left

 

[DomiMik]

I thought a look at the repair manual would be revealing but the information is very vague, it says bonnet and bumper should have a 5mm gap all around.

 

[Martin Sullivan]

That’s interesting. 5mm seems huge!

 

[bear2020]

Had all my panels off and put them back on/off/on/off and came to the conclusion the gaps are huge. In the end I went round with a 5mm spacer and set them all to that after using some Vernier's on a customers car to check the gaps.

Compared to todays cars the gaps do look huge