[Luper52]

My 01/07 build 335i E90 came without an oil cooler, and in the southern U.S. heat, I want to ensure it has adequate cooling for any given climate, with FBO. I don't plan to track it, so I know it's overkill, but worst case scenario, it looks cool.

I installed the G Plus 25 row oil cooler kit. It came with a vented mounting frame as well. It's pretty dang big.

After the headache of mounting the OEM bracket, and getting everything back together, I realized my fog light was making contact with the oil cooler and was causing it to rub a little on my 19 inch wheels when making anything over 25 degree turns. To make more room, I removed the fog light. Fitment is perfect now and cooling is even more effective. Consistently 20-30 degrees cooler than stock temps if the car is moving.

My dilemma now is aesthetics. It looks kinda cool with both fog lights removed and the silver trim on the lower grills removed. I removed the silver trim so that it will be less noticeable that I am missing fog lights.

In my mind, I have two options:

1.) Make my own glossy black grills that look OEM
2.) Drop $550 on an M3 Bumper with ducts

To expand on option 1, I don't think it will look perfect, which would bother me, and I still need to figure out how air is going to flow on the driver's side. If the fog light is gone, and there's no ventilation in the wheel well trim like on the oil cooler side, is this bad? Will it put a lot of wear and tear on my undertray?

That last thought is what had me thinking about the M3 style bumper. If it comes with ducts, it would be significantly cheaper than buying an M Sport bumper and then buying M3 ducts. Still would cost about $450 for the bumper and at least $150 for paint. And not to mention I'd want to get the PDC version as well, so all of the sensors and misc and that's another $100 or so So $650 of money I'd rather spend on a new phone, or not at all. I was going to eventually get an upgraded bumper anyways, but am still waiting for an alpine white LCI hood to appear in my local junkyard before I pulled the trigger.

My initial question that I'd like to address though is now that the driver's side has the fog light gone, is this introduction of airflow going to be bad for the undertray or anything else? Or can I just leave it as-is, at least for the forseeable future.

[Serf27]

Get some steel mesh and just wrap it from the inside around the old grill/fog light area(with the old grill removed) and use adhesive to hold it down.
It won’t look bad but won’t have the oem mesh style.

[BB_cuda]

I presume you had to code out the fog lights or you just don’t turn them on ( like me).
I did the M3 rep bumper conversion. I bought the M3 real ducts. I had to trim the non bumper cover ends of ducts and it ain’t pretty. No one sees those though. I glued and taped the M3 ducts into the bumper cover. Been thus way for 6 years+.