[bavarian19]

Ok. I have been getting a few PM's about how I did the chrome trim swap, and here is the DIY. Sorry no pictures... I did it all without taking the time out to snap pics...

Much thanks to James from Bimmerworld who not only showed me how this was done, but also bought new window sill trim pieces after the old ones were not reusable (read below to find out why)...

Total Time about 1.5 hrs

Front Kidney Grill - Really easy. Follow the DIY from e90post. Just pull, and it pops out. Snap the new grill into place. If you have serious troubles with this, go pay someone (preferrably me) to do the rest of your trim swap...


Upper Window Trim - This trim is rather easy to swap out. Open the two doors on that side. Starting in the middle, put your fingers in the small gap on the upper side of the trim, and pull back. This trim is held into place by clips, and should be rather easy to pull back. Once you have the middle started, work your way from the middle to the back, and when thats all finished, work up to the front. The upper trim should not take you long to do.

To snap in the new trim, you might need to take some clips off of the old trim being as they might have popped off with the trim. Put them back in the respective holes they came in.

Now you should be ready to pop the new trim into place. Start by pushing the trim into place in the middle again. Once the trim is clipped in place, make sure the trim will line up with the curvatures of the window lines. Once it all lines up, work your way to the rear of the car snapping it into place. Then finish up with the front part of the trim.



Lower Window Sill Trim - This is the complicated part. Word from the wise... If you are trying to do a trim swap with a 330 owner (taking their chrome trim), you can not reuse this trim. In the process of taking this trim off, it will bend (it is made of metal). When you straighten it out, it will have small bubbles in it, and it wont look good. It will look like someone took a ballpine (sp) hammer and had a few swings at your trim. If you are going to chrome trim, you will have to buy these parts in some way or form. When I did my trim swap with James from bimmerworld, we did not know this, and James was curteous enough to buy me the trim. The black trim from the 325 can be reusable if it is taken off properly. Its made of plastic.

So how do we do this? Here we go... Back windows... Open your back door and roll down your windows. On the edge of the trim closest to the back of the car, you will notice that the trim conforms to a small groove inside the door. You will need to take a small regular headed screwdriver, and pry upwards popping that part of the trim out. Once that edge is up, pull from both sides of the trim (inside edge of the trim from inside the window and the outside edge) working your way to the front of the car. There are two pieces to each of these window sill trim pieces. The plastic trim (or metal if its a 330) and a rubber sheathing that is used to attach the trim to the window sill)...

So that is how to get the rears out. To get the fronts out is much more complicated. For this process, you need to remove your side mirrors. To remove the mirrors you have to do three things.

1 - You need to remove the door panel. Starting from the vertical part of the door trim, pull hard on the door panel. You will need a good amount of force to pull this off. Pull it back so you can access the black plastic lining that runs around the inside upper part of the door. You do not need to completely remove this panel, but it needs to come about halfway off for you to get what you need.

2 - Remove the inside plastic trim that runs on the upper part of the door. This is simple to remove if you have removed the door panel correctlty. Just pull it off of the door. It will still hang in place due to some wiring of the side speaker. This will give you access to the 3 torx screws that hold the mirror in place.

3 - Remove the mirror. Using a torx screwdriver, remove the three screws holding the mirror in place. Make sure you are holding the mirror when you unscrew the last one. Dont want your mirror to fall and scratch your car. You will need a second person to hold this while you are doing the trim swap.

Once these three steps are complete, you can remove the trim smiliarly to the rear window trim.





Putting the new trim in. If you notice, the rubber part of the trim has a single channel that needs to match up with the 'wall' inside the door. There is also a small plastic clip that sits on the rear side of the trim. You need to start in the rear with installing the trim. Slide the rear plastic clip over the edge of the door (you will need to be pushing down on the trim a little bit to get it into place). Slowly push the trim down into place. The rest of it should slide right in if you have lined everything up in the rear. This goes for all 4 window sill trim pieces.


Putting your front doors back together. Backtrace your steps to remove your mirrors. Put your mirror back on. WHen you put the black plastic piece back in place, make sure it covers the weather stripping when your putting it back on... This is challenging (somewhat). Snap your door panel back in place.


Last step. Enjoy your new trim. If you have followed my directions, crack open a beer and celebrate the fact that you made sense of this long DIY.


Thats it...