The saga continues - bumper cover repair!

[MattInSV]

After getting the car back from the mechanic to replace the front struts and address the leaky intake issues making it stumble, I logged only about 200 freeway miles before I heard a scrubbing noise in the roundabout and I pulled over to see the entire front clip had fallen off. Actually it was dragging and being held on by the lighting wires
It looks like there’s enough there to salvage but all of the 8 fastener holes across the top are torn out so I am thinking about pop riveting on three aluminum plates about 25x200mm or to bridge over cover the broken holes. So I can redrill some new ones



Any other ideas? (This is really just a stop gap so I can drive this thing a little instead of contributing to its long term Medicare program. The bumper is scraped with a couple tears at the bottom so when and if I do repaint I will be getting a replacement)

luckily it’s a convertible and yes the bumper does fit in the passenger area!

 

[MattInSV]

New plan: after talking it over with the neighborhood gearhead, the easy fix is just to drill 8-10 new holes into the aluminum bumper to use the existing fasteners and capture the bumper cover near intact material near the old attachment points.

Planned new holes in bumper


Planned new holes in cover. Love those zip ties!

Meanwhile, I’ve discovered I’m missing some underbelly plastic and a wheelwell liner. Does anyone have an exploded view of this area of the bodywork?

 

[AntStark]

RealOEM.com - Online BMW Parts Catalog

BMW parts Z3 E36 Z3 1.9 Diagram Selection

www.realoem.com

 

[MattInSV]

Thanks for this. I am actually a bit more confused because the applicable components seem to be spread over a few pages and not really shown in relation to each other.

the bumper cover doesn’t show its relationship to the bumper reinforce the but i was able to glean from another site that there should have been 16 fasteners, 8 top and 8 from the bottom, abd tge bumper cover should connect to the wheel well skins, which aren’t even shown here.


What’s confusing me now is the air duct page below . I think it is showing both the 4cylinder 1.9 belly pan and the 6 cylinder pan but I’m not sure.


item 01 the upper pan looks to be a 1.9L part number


With item 02 being the 6 cylinder version of the belly pan?

 

[Delk]

What did you do to loose half the front of the car?

 

[MattInSV]

What did you do to loose half the front of the car?

From what I can tell, it was in a minor accident that crushed the tip of the bonnet and broke some plastic and fasteners, and whoever “repaired” it tossed some the broken plastic parts and reattached the rest in a shoddy way with a few clips, zip ties and hope.