In today's entry: the exhaust pipe trims. This is also probably valid for the refreshed 2.2L diesel DW12C / 4HL.
When I bought the car it had some minor crash damage on the rear bumper, presumably a previous owner had backed into a bollard or something. Turns out the damage isn't just a small crack in the bumper, but the rear left exhaust trim took some of the brunt. As a result it looked a little droopy as seen in the poor crop of a photo below.
Alas, 'twas not the case.
- In step one it tells you to pull off the rear wheel. You don't need to do that. You can get the car to lift-stage 2 to make it a bit easier if you have H3+ though.
- Step one also points out three screws (1) to be removed. These are both right and wrong. The bottom-most and uppermost screws are there (T20 heads), but there is another screw (T30 head) mounted vertically immediately above the uppermost screw shown. It's right on the seam between the bumper and rear wing. The middle screw shown (T20 head) only reveals itself when you peel back the wheel arch liner.
- Step two doesn't explicitly mention it (it does show it in a way), but you need to pull out the main tail light clusters to reveal the screws marked as (3). It shows a pair of screws (4) but the diagram isn't too clear. These are actually inside the wheel arches at the back. Look for a pair of body-coloured, plastic, posts protruding into the wheel arch, these are part of the bumper. The screws will be between these. These are the same T30 heads as (3) and the ones not mentioned in the last step. Luckily, you can get to the left one without having to pull the battery out on the V6 diesels. It's a bit tight, but it's doable.
- Step four mentions unplugging the parking sensor loom connector. On mine the connector was actually on the left side of the car and it was much easier to disconnect it once I had actually pulled the bumper off. Be gentle if using my method as you can damage the loom if you yank the bumper away before unplugging.
Anyway, once the bumper was off I could actually see the extent of the damage. Turns out the bracket was broken in multiple places. The area near the top screw hole was cracked. The "outside" mount was broken off the bracket and and larger part of the bracket on that side was broken off from itself
Let this serve as a warning for you though, if you have an X8Z or 4HL and you want to do something to the exhaust tip trim, it's probably not worth the faff unless you're like me.
