[mikasaur]

Hello all, just wanted to record for posterity my small weekend project. I've seen a small number of threads talking about the carbon fiber lips for our cars as well as others asking about removing body pieces attached with Betalink.

The lips on the car that I bought looked matte black. What's weird is that under the car your could see the carbon fiber pattern but everywhere else they were matte.




I bought new ones to install. But of course had to get these ones off. After hearing how impossible it is to get stuff off attached with betalink, I was more than a little nervous.

I used a small hairdryer and a body panel removal tool to pry off the lips. It was slow going, and I found it was easiest to start at the outside most corners and work my way inward. I'd heat up a small section and pry it off -- trying not to get too nervous about the awful cracking sound it would make.

For those wondering if you could carefully remove something attached with betalink and have the pristine body panel underneath... you can't. It chemically bonds with the paint and will rip chunks of paint off with it.







I was able to go a little slower and did a little better on the passenger side lip. But obviously I would not want this to show as is. I had to put the new lips on top.

When I got the old lips off I tried my best to remove the betalink that remained. It was also slow going. I'd heat it up and use a body panel tool as well as my fingers to try and pry it off.

I used 3M VHB tape to mount the new lips to the car (I didn't want to use betalink again).



I ran into two major problems:

1. I have a clear bra on my car and the act of prying off the old lips marred the bra a little
2. There was enough betalink still on the bumper that when I put the new lips on they weren't quite flush with the bumper. They stuck out by a mm or two.

What I would do differently next time:

• Go even slower. I have a tendency to get excited when I work on my car and go faster than I should. I'd probably heat up smaller sections at a time and very, very slowly pry it off. The whole project took me 2 hours but I probably could have done it better if I took closer to 3.
• Spend more time removing the betalink left on the bumper. Something in my head told me to preserve the bumper as much as possible, but I should have just written it off. The new lips were going over it so who cares how bad it looks underneath? I would have used a wire brush attachment on an angle grinder or even some sort of Dremel attachment to better remove the betalink, even if it ate into the paint/bumper underneath. This would probably allow the lips to sit more flush with the bumper
• That said, because I used tape it might be that they'd never sit flush quite like it would with liquid betalink.

So that's that. Not sure why the old lips turned matte black. I didn't find a BMW sticker inside them so maybe they weren't real BMW parts and just faded. Or maybe the PO somehow did it on purpose.

Hope someone finds this on a random Google search at some point and helps them out. If something was attached with betalink you're not getting it off without it looking like crap (and you'll probably damage the thing you're taking off).

[6ixSpd]

Betaclean in the BMW Betalink kit works great for dissolving that stuff. Maybe others in the future working with this stuff can have some luck using that in addition to your technique. Good job making that as clean as possible!

[mikasaur]

Thanks! I'm hoping once I replace the clear bra it'll look even better (but I just got it so we're talking years, unfortunately).

I was using beta clean that came with the lips. It -- along with heat -- definitely helped, but it didn't dissolve it like cartoon acid. I probably could have used a lot more and spent longer on it; if someone else does that and has better results let us know.

Still, I can't imagine I'd be able to take the lips off and have a pristine bumper underneath. Maybe if you could somehow submerge the whole bumper in betaclean and leave it there...

:edit: oh and since I'm new to the forum and had a terrible signature I'm stealing yours, 6ixSpd. Haha, it's a good one, so thanks!