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      06-14-2006, 08:10 PM   #1
Gantra
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Door kick plate interior piece came loose

A rear passenger caught his shoe on this plastic piece and popped it off the white plastic clip that secures it. I can't figure out how to reattach it.

Anyone have any ideas how to reattach this to the clip? (you can see part of the clip by my thumb.

Thanks for any help!

(see attachment for photo)
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      01-03-2007, 08:49 PM   #2
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anyone know how to fix this?
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      01-03-2007, 08:58 PM   #3
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i hope it fixed by now... that pic is from 6/06

maybe glue?
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      01-05-2007, 09:07 PM   #4
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I would bring it back to the dealership.

Seems like totally BMW's assembly mistake.
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      01-07-2007, 06:41 AM   #5
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I'll answer it even though the thread is old. It looks like the same system that BMW used on the E36 and E46, and i've had those apart several times. The black plastic panel has two rails inside it. The white plastic clips slide into these rails and then you clip (push) the assembly back onto the door frame. What often happens (like in the case above) is that the plastic panel gets lifted up and the rails give a little (they are only made of plastic) and the white clip is removed from the guide and left in the hole on the door frame. Don't try and hit the panel back onto the clip - this will just break the guides!

Take care when removing the panel - the clips are held in so tightly that they often break off when removing the panel anyway. Either that or the rails break. Luckily the parts are cheap to replace.
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      01-08-2007, 02:44 PM   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jhbodle
I'll answer it even though the thread is old. It looks like the same system that BMW used on the E36 and E46, and i've had those apart several times. The black plastic panel has two rails inside it. The white plastic clips slide into these rails and then you clip (push) the assembly back onto the door frame. What often happens (like in the case above) is that the plastic panel gets lifted up and the rails give a little (they are only made of plastic) and the white clip is removed from the guide and left in the hole on the door frame. Don't try and hit the panel back onto the clip - this will just break the guides!
+1 I totally agreed. There are several plastic clips that slide into a rail. Each plastic has it own rail. The open end of the rail is slightly larger then the other end. As you slide the clip into the open end toward the other smaller end, the clip gets lock into the rail tighter. Once you slide all the clip into their respective rail, you snap the black trim back into place. Some caution here so that you dont go rip out this plastic piece, the difficult part in putting it back into place is that the plastic clip can slide back and forth on the rail so you will have a hard time matching the clip on the trim with the clip hole on the car for them to snap into place. I took my apart (a while back) and had the opportunity to snap some photos but I totally forgot because I was fighting with the freaking clip to try and align it with the clip hole. It was quite a battle but I won in the end
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      02-11-2007, 12:46 AM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by txusa03 View Post
+1 I totally agreed. There are several plastic clips that slide into a rail. Each plastic has it own rail. The open end of the rail is slightly larger then the other end. As you slide the clip into the open end toward the other smaller end, the clip gets lock into the rail tighter. Once you slide all the clip into their respective rail, you snap the black trim back into place. Some caution here so that you dont go rip out this plastic piece, the difficult part in putting it back into place is that the plastic clip can slide back and forth on the rail so you will have a hard time matching the clip on the trim with the clip hole on the car for them to snap into place. I took my apart (a while back) and had the opportunity to snap some photos but I totally forgot because I was fighting with the freaking clip to try and align it with the clip hole. It was quite a battle but I won in the end
Can you give me some tips on how you won this battle? I have tried to get this trim back on for 15 minutes, then I decided to get some help online before I damage something. I tried "aligning the four clips" on the rails and sliding the trim forward and only got one front clip on succesfully, the other 3 clips did not engage. :mad:

I feel so frustrated after 15 minutes trying to get the flipping trim back on that I thought about buying pulling the 4 clips from the car and buying new clips. I think those clips are one-way, and once you pull them out, they cannot be reused. With the new clips, I can slide them into the rails first before putting them on the car.
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      02-11-2007, 05:35 AM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by KT9 View Post
Can you give me some tips on how you won this battle? I have tried to get this trim back on for 15 minutes, then I decided to get some help online before I damage something. I tried "aligning the four clips" on the rails and sliding the trim forward and only got one front clip on succesfully, the other 3 clips did not engage. :mad:

I feel so frustrated after 15 minutes trying to get the flipping trim back on that I thought about buying pulling the 4 clips from the car and buying new clips. I think those clips are one-way, and once you pull them out, they cannot be reused. With the new clips, I can slide them into the rails first before putting them on the car.
Yup, that's what I did most of the time. The clips are very cheap to buy from the dealer and the existing ones are very hard to remove! You will still have to remove the existing clips though, and in my experience the top part sometimes breaks off, leaving the rest of the clip in the hole with no way of pulling it up. The only option then is to push it through the hole. This is not a good thing, because there is no way to retrieve it after that and it will just rattle around in your car forever. Be very careful when removing them!
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      02-12-2007, 01:34 PM   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jhbodle View Post
Yup, that's what I did most of the time. The clips are very cheap to buy from the dealer and the existing ones are very hard to remove! You will still have to remove the existing clips though, and in my experience the top part sometimes breaks off, leaving the rest of the clip in the hole with no way of pulling it up. The only option then is to push it through the hole. This is not a good thing, because there is no way to retrieve it after that and it will just rattle around in your car forever. Be very careful when removing them!

Anybody has a detailed picture of what this clip looks like underneath? I tried looking up realoem.com and can't make it out very well, no details. I want to extract the existing ones and I don't want to have the broken off pieces rattling all over the place.

I think I just have to extract two rear clips. I was able to engage 2 front clips by sliding the trim forward. With the two remaining clips, I'll put on the new clips on the trim and then push through the metal opening on the door sill.

A little off topic but I have to say that by looking at the exposed parts, I noticed that the sound insulation foam under the interior carpet is quite substantial. German engineering at work here. Serviceability, however, is more difficult for the average person.
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      02-14-2007, 03:21 PM   #10
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hey KT9, sorry for the late reply but I do not subscribe to any thread (just dont have time nor space to get notification on all the thread I posted in). Best to pm me for future reference.

anyway back to topic. Yes, you can see now what a battle it is to but this trim back. Unfortunately, when I was involved in my own fight and frustration, I forgot to snap a few mug shot of the stubborn clip.

On with the reinstallation. If my memory is still good, i believed I had to removed the clips that got stuck on the car (not on the trim side). It is one hell of a fight to removed the stucked clip as well and lucky for me none of them broke so I was able to reuse them. Once all the clips are removed, what you want to do is place each clip onto the rail on the trim piece (the clip has a rectangular head and a pointy head. The rectangular head slide into the rail on the trim piece. Notice the clip will slide back and forth so dont worry if they move back and forth but just make sure they dont slide off the rail and fall to the ground.

Once you have all the clips in the rail on the trim, carefully (because the clip will slide off the rail if you make sudden movement) eyeball and align each clip onto the hole and just set it into the hole but dont snap it in completely and work your way to the next clip and align it by slightly moving the trim forward or backward (if you move too much, you dislodge the clip from the rail, hence you lost that battle and would have to start over again and that is why I suggest you dont snap the clip in because you might have to start over again and trust me you do not want to pull any clip out of the hole). You might have to do this several time before you get all 4-5 clips aligned with all 4-5 holes and when you do have all 4-5 clips lign up perfectly then you can put pressure on each clip to snap it into place and promise yourself never to take the trim off again. Hard for me to explain in words but hopefully you get the idea.

If you only have 1 clip looses (like OP) and the clip is stuck to the hole, then it is quite diffcult to get the clip to slide into the rail of the trim. Your only recourse is to remove the whole trim and pull out all the clip and use my above steps to put the trim back.

Again, I am not a bmw techie but that is how I was able to come out a winner. There might be another trick to this which I dont know.

best of luck.
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      02-16-2007, 12:51 AM   #11
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Well, I decided to take another bout at it again to get the trim back on.

I had to remove all four clips. I took a 12 inch piece of flexible tubing (twine would also work) and wrap it around the head of the clip. I didn't want to use pliers or anything hard that could damage the clip. As I pull up on it, I also wiggle it left and right. The clip eventually move out of the hole and off completely. Don't attempt to pull it straight up, it takes a lot of strength and you might bent the metal hole underneath. The method is kinda like pulling teeth, so to speak, but it works. The clip is actually pretty tough, I didn't feel that it would break off easily as I orginally thought.

After all 4 clips taken out, putting the trim back was a snap. Slide the clip on the rails, align all four holes and slowly snap it into place.
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      02-18-2007, 11:41 PM   #12
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The same part of trim on the front passenger door came off on mine after
the dealer replaced the seat belt washer to fix a rattle and my wife then
accidentally kicked it. I spent 20 mins trying to put it back on properly but
I had no luck so I used the "brute force" method and in they went
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      02-19-2007, 03:24 AM   #13
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It does take a minute to get it right but keep trying!
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      02-20-2007, 08:36 PM   #14
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By "brute force" you mean just pushing the trim down from the top so that it magically wrap over the clip? I tried semi-brute and it didn't go anywhere.



Quote:
Originally Posted by shadowcoder View Post
The same part of trim on the front passenger door came off on mine after
the dealer replaced the seat belt washer to fix a rattle and my wife then
accidentally kicked it. I spent 20 mins trying to put it back on properly but
I had no luck so I used the "brute force" method and in they went
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      02-21-2007, 08:12 AM   #15
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Quote:
Originally Posted by KT9 View Post
Well, I decided to take another bout at it again to get the trim back on.

I had to remove all four clips. I took a 12 inch piece of flexible tubing (twine would also work) and wrap it around the head of the clip. I didn't want to use pliers or anything hard that could damage the clip. As I pull up on it, I also wiggle it left and right. The clip eventually move out of the hole and off completely. Don't attempt to pull it straight up, it takes a lot of strength and you might bent the metal hole underneath. The method is kinda like pulling teeth, so to speak, but it works. The clip is actually pretty tough, I didn't feel that it would break off easily as I orginally thought.

After all 4 clips taken out, putting the trim back was a snap. Slide the clip on the rails, align all four holes and slowly snap it into place.
hey, glad to see that you had no major issues fixing your trim. I like your idea on pulling the clip out of the hole using flexible tubing or twine to prevent damage to clip and your fingers . Where do you get the flexible tubing from?
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      02-21-2007, 08:15 AM   #16
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Quote:
Originally Posted by KT9 View Post
By "brute force" you mean just pushing the trim down from the top so that it magically wrap over the clip? I tried semi-brute and it didn't go anywhere.

If you push dow with brute force, I think you will more likely push the clip deeper into the hole. Maybe he got lucky and the clip snapped into the rail on the trim.

Sometime a little luck does help...
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      02-21-2007, 11:35 AM   #17
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The flexible tubing can be found in most hardware stores (Ace Hardware) in the plumbing sedtion. It's some kind of clear plastic, maybe polyvinyl. I used the 1/4" outside diameter clear tubing which I had laying around. I guess you can also use lamp cords, speaker wires, or rope strings from fancy shopping bags as well. Anything that you can wrap around that strangle the clip works!



Quote:
Originally Posted by txusa03 View Post
hey, glad to see that you had no major issues fixing your trim. I like your idea on pulling the clip out of the hole using flexible tubing or twine to prevent damage to clip and your fingers . Where do you get the flexible tubing from?
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      02-22-2007, 05:05 AM   #18
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Quote:
Originally Posted by KT9 View Post
By "brute force" you mean just pushing the trim down from the top so that it magically wrap over the clip? I tried semi-brute and it didn't go anywhere.
I slammed my fist over the trim where the 3 clips were and they snapped in.
The 4th one was having none of that so on that I pressed my palm above it
on top of the trim and I almost had to put all my weight before it snapped in.
I tell you this, I had lost my patience after 20 mins of trying to get it in the
right way.
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      02-22-2007, 07:25 AM   #19
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Quote:
Originally Posted by shadowcoder View Post
I slammed my fist over the trim where the 3 clips were and they snapped in.
The 4th one was having none of that so on that I pressed my palm above it
on top of the trim and I almost had to put all my weight before it snapped in.
I tell you this, I had lost my patience after 20 mins of trying to get it in the
right way.
maybe you discovered a new way to install this trim piece. Sometime brute forces win over scientific reasoning and deduction
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      02-22-2007, 10:59 AM   #20
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Quote:
Originally Posted by shadowcoder View Post
I slammed my fist over the trim where the 3 clips were and they snapped in.
The 4th one was having none of that so on that I pressed my palm above it
on top of the trim and I almost had to put all my weight before it snapped in.
I tell you this, I had lost my patience after 20 mins of trying to get it in the
right way.
I'm glad your method works for you. You sure had more patience than I did. I give up forcing it in after 15 minutes.

I didn't try to force it down any more after looking at the clip width and the width of rails on the trim. They were the same width. IOW, the rails were directly above the clips. I tried flaring out one of the rails so that it go over the clip easier but stopped when I saw signs of stress whitening on the plastic.

I think in the process of forcing it down, I have flattened some of the square bump stops to prevent the clip from sliding back and forth once it's in place. It's not bad. There's enough friction so I'll just leave it be for now. I'm just glad I got it all back together with little or no damage. If it comes off again, I'll get all four new clips and a kick plate trim altogether.
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      05-27-2009, 11:03 PM   #21
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Just wanted to say thanks to the contributors to the above thread. 2 years later and this was still ever-helpful on my '09 e90. that rope/tubing trick really helped make it easier too!

e90 post...saving busy drivers from trips to the dealership, one problem at a time :-)
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      06-24-2018, 01:43 PM   #22
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And nine years after that the advice still works. I was able to remove the broken trim piece, use a piece of thin rope to remove the clips and put the replacement part back in eezy-peezy. Thank you all the above contributors. You guys are helping save money, one BMW at a time!
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