Remove front air opening slats?

[Bob Z.]

'08 987 S - how do I remove the horizontal silver slats from the left & right air inlet openings (just below the fog lights)? I want to paint them Black.

Thanks in advance...Bob Z.

Bob, there was a TBS on these grills with the early 987's for fading issues. The TSB # was W608. I would bet the front bumper needs to be pulled.

How did you get your rear trim piece off to paint black? I looked at mine this weekend, and the back side of the rear bumper is completely covered by the heat sheilding.

[Bob Z.]

Thanks...pulling the bumper seems like a big job - my wife says to leave them along so maybe for once I'll listen to her.

Here is a link to a drawing about taking the rear exhaust trim piece off:

http://www.renntech.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=16051

I got a thin screwdriver behind it, between the exhaust trim piece and the heat shield, and then used my fingers to pull it. I thought it would break since I was pulling kinda hard and then all of a sudden it popped off, at least one half of it did. I then started pulling on the other side and off it came. It has 4 small tabs holding it in, kinda like on some of the slats on the side vents - it would be pretty hard to break them IMO.

I then cleaned it up real good and sprayed it with around 4 coats of High Temp paint, Black Semi-gloss, which I got at Wal-Mart for just under $7. After it dried for a day I stuck it back on and I've driven it a couple times and it still looks fine so I suspect that it will last.

If you study the Bently manual, pulling the front cover off is cake, after the first time I could have mine out in an hour. It's a good opportunity to clean the sealed radiators too, which collect refuse in the furthest sealed corner. If you don't want to do that, I think you could carefully tape off the front cover and shoot the vents the color of your liking, good luck.

Bob, you will need a paint product with a lot of flex too. Those vents are very wiggly.

[Bob Z.]

Agree - I grabbed them and they moved all over...wiggly indeed! I'll do some research on flexible paint unless someone chimes in here first.