So the long awaited rs3 grill arrived on Wednesday last week so I darted home from work to try and get it put on. Inhaled my dinner as quickly as I could and made a swift move to the man cave. I had read threads on the forum saying that installing it was relatively easy so i thought I would give it a go myself even though I have literally no experience in this field whatsoever(self satisfaction and all that) so I pop the hood and get to work. Problem number 1 arises. Whoever had the car off previously to change the Audi emblem to black has ruined 2 of the screws near the engine bay which made it extremely difficult to remove so was left with no other option than to drill them out and replace them with new ones which I still have to do. Unscrewed the rest of the screws with some difficulty as I did not have any axle stands and eventually got the bumper off with the help of my friend ali. Next stage of the process was to swap the bumpers round and the Audi emblem from my old grill. By this point it is now Thursday evening and i am beginning to panic at the amount of time spent on the process and the backlog of uni work I have left myself I decide it s time to bring in someone who knows what they are doing so I text a fellow asn forum member S3_Jacko (Who i cannot thank enough) for his expertise. Once he gets here I have the crash bar painted black and he gets to work swapping grills round which I had given up on which took him no time at all. Time to get new grill and bumper on to car. Place the grill back on the car and get screwing all the screws back in the front. Jack the car up to get underneath the car and make for easier access to the wheel arches. Problem number 2 has made itself visible. The company who refurbished my alloys must have put the wheels back on when the paint was still wet so they were stuck. With 3 sets of hands and a mallet we eventually managed to get it off and get back to work. The final problem we encountered was towards the end of fitting the bumper on whereby we couldn't get the engine guard back on properly. In S3_Jackos defence he didn't take the grill off so was not to be expected to know the order in which to put it back together. If he had done the whole job himself it'd taken him 2 hours I reckon (not 3 days). I had another go at trying to fix that last piece of the job myself yesterday with little joy. Time is now more of a factor than ever with uni work piling up so call the family mechanic to give me a hand. 10 mins of his time and everything is back in its rightful place. Anyway I am really pleased with the new grill it has completely changed the loom of my car. I must mention that I have changed the rs3 badge to just RS as it is my initials not because I am trying to make the car seem like it is an RS3. Everyone is entitled to their opinion with regards to that of course. Here is some pics of the grill. My old black edition grill will be up for sale is anyone is interested. I will be posting it in the classified ads. Thanks
