Bolds or rivets inside of front wheel arch (splashguard)???

Franzino · Post by **Franzino** » Wed Jan 04, 2017 3:54 pm

I just got my Z4M back from my very friendly "official" BMW garage where they did some body repairs on my Z4M (new front bumper, new front inner wheel arch on each side - splashguard, new front side body panels on each side). I noticed that there are now all bolts instead of plastic revets holding the inner wheel arch to the front bumper. Before the repairs it was only plastic revets on this place and no bolds on my car... My dealer told me that the bolds are the correct way of fitting and that it was previously wrong on my car. He also showed some pictures of recent BMW's from the showroom and indeed on these new cars it are all bolds on this place and no revets...but a Z4M is far from a new car of course. But maybe it is the new and better way of fitting these and that is maybe the reason why it says "up to 03/2007" with the expanding rivets on the info of realOEM.com.

Before

After

Info from Real OEM (where it says "up to 03/2007")

Other new BMW

Machine monkey · Post by **Machine monkey** » Wed Jan 04, 2017 4:05 pm

mine and all the z4s i have worked on have had rivets.

Franzino · Post by **Franzino** » Wed Jan 04, 2017 4:08 pm

Machine monkey wrote:mine and all the z4s i have worked on have had rivets.

That was my impression also when seeing other Z4M's... But the technical guy at the BMW garage looked it up and say it was the way to do it.
On the info from realOEM it is stated; up to 03/2007 with the expanding rivets. Maybe it was the old way to do it and they changed this after 03/2007....when bolts became the "modern" way to do it....?

cj10jeeper · Post by **cj10jeeper** » Wed Jan 04, 2017 4:33 pm

Never seen one anywhere with other than rivets. 2 designs of them fitted, some flush and others have a head on the locking pin

Other models do have bolts, so I expect he mixing up models and ages

XMetal · Post by **XMetal** » Wed Jan 04, 2017 6:19 pm

My 03/2008 built still had the plastic rivets. They just changed it from the expanding rivets to blind rivets, but still plastic rivets

Bing · Post by **Bing** » Wed Jan 04, 2017 7:08 pm

You'd have thought they'd at least find some black bolts... mine has the plastic blind rivets too, that you push the pin through to take them out. You can buy bags of them off eBay for small money if my memory serves me correctly.

Viren · Post by **Viren** » Wed Jan 04, 2017 7:17 pm

Looks quite ugly, they should defo be rivets, did they screw it into the bumper or is there a nut on the other end. Either way get them off and fit rivets (can buy them from ebay, very cheap)

Franzino · Post by **Franzino** » Wed Jan 04, 2017 7:23 pm

Viren wrote:Looks quite ugly, they should defo be rivets, did they screw it into the bumper or is there a nut on the other end. Either way get them off and fit rivets (can buy them from ebay, very cheap)

I hope they did not damage things...so that I can still fit the rivets... It looks really ugly!

Franzino · Post by **Franzino** » Thu Jan 05, 2017 8:37 pm

Problem resolved

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