Problem with Side skirts on bottom of each door.... - The Unofficial BMW M5 Messageboard (m5board.com)

911/M5 · 4th September 2002, 06:07

The ones on each door of my car are sagging at the ends. This is causing them to rub the top of the actual side skirt and wear the paint down.

I figured there was some way to take them off and refasten them with new fasteners or whatever. My question is: Do any of you have any experience with these door skirts and how they attach and are removed from the car? If you do, do you know how I can reattach them to where they won't sag? Is it glue, fasteners or a combination of the two?

This seems pretty trivial, I know, but I am very picky about my car. It looks 99.9% perfect now, and I want to keep it that way, but if these sagging door skirts keep diggin off paint, they might eventually rust the side skirt/side of the car where they hit.

TIA

Robert in Nashville

Bryn · 4th September 2002, 12:16

Strange... these strips attach by simply pushing on to the lip at the bottom of the door. They take a lot of force to get on, as both my dad and myself had to work together to get them back onto my car.

I can't imagine why they'd sag, other than the strips themselves becoming mis-formed and not fitting to the door any longer. I suppose the door lip could have rusted into non-existance, but this seems unlikely on a car of this quality

Best bet is to take them off altogether and inspect the individual parts.

Cheers,
Bryn.

IvanDias · 4th September 2002, 14:32

I had to get them done on the 535i.

The strips do sag, what happens is that the plastic gets old and tired, and then starts to not grip as firmly. This causes it to loosen and sag, normally at the rear of the door, away from the hinge.

You will find that if you pull down on the strip, it will easily come away from the door. When it is off, you wil probably notice dirt, debris and quite possibly rust on the lower metal edge of the door. That is because as the strip was no longer a tight grip, water and rubbish has accumulated here.
Clean it well.

The strips are available from any main dealer, mine had to be ordered, 2 days. Take the chassis number, I think they are the same across all E34 cars, I don`t think the side strips are M5 specific.

Annoyingly, they don`t come painted, so you will have to order some can(s) of paint to match your car.

The strips take a staggering amount of pressure to put back on. Because of this, it is far to easy to "move" the paint, so a good tip is to leave the new painted strip for a long time to let the paint fully cure. My independant says they often leave theirs a week or two (!).

I couldn`t work out how to refit it (I didn`t want ot break it with the effort I was putting on it), so I took it to the dealer. The whole car rocked about with the effort required to refit it. As they are new, they are very tight. Some kind of non-water based, yet also non-paint dissolving lubricant rubbed along the metal of the door is recommended.

It`s a while since I had to do the drivers side, but if I recall, it was about £50 GBP for the strip, a can of BMW primer and a can of BMW black metallic paint.

Hope this helps.

Ivan