h8rade

So I drove my car to a grand opening event in my town. I'm driving to the event on this narrow, but short dirt road. Someone else is leaving and I'm behind a 69 Camaro. The Camaro gets out of the way, but there is not enough room for me to let him buy so I pull unto a grass culvert to let the other guy out. Apparently there is a large sewer grate sticking up out of the ground and I hear/feel it start to scrape the under try. I immediately stop, wait for the other guy to leave and then I back up. A little more scraping and I'm off the sewer. I check my car and notice that the under tray is somewhat smushed, but nothing serious too serious. I attempt to move the plastic, but it won't budge, everything seems to be rock solid. I'm not happy, but at least I didn't screw up the chin spoiler on the bumper.

Then on Monday I am driving to work and I here an occasional scratch. Can't really tell what it is, but I resolve to check it out when I get to work. I get to work and I notice that the right side of my bumper is no longer connected to the car. The tabs are broken. It looks like someone forcibly pulled it from the car. Part of the under tray is missing. It appears that part of the under tray came lose and caught on the tire and the tire ran over it, thereby forcibly ripping the part off and damaging the tabs on the bumper.

It appears I need a new under tray and I'm pretty sure a new bumper unless someone can plasti-weld the tabs back on.

Dammit...

Spoonie G

Wow!! Too courteous ... I'll take a lesson from this and never leave the pavement to let someone by. If I do, I'll make sure I take a long hard look at where I'm driving. But yeah... Broken tabs means new bumper.

DennisMitchell

Bad couple of days... sounds cosmetic but once repaired there will be happiness again!

arU4ic

OH NO, our first casualty… S3 down.

So sorry man, but remember it could always be worse.

I feel your pain, I really do. Waiting for my first, inevitable, ding. /crossedfingers

Evolvd

Any pictures? That's awful man, I hope it's not as bad as it sounds.

On a positive note, if you do have to replace your bumper please post a how-to if you decide to tackle it yourself. (in case anyone wants do a front mount IC in the future)

h8rade

I'll post a picture soon. I've been living at work lately and been to tired at night to bother.

Unpainted S3 Bumper cost = $925
Untray = $137

So this is going to be expensive.

h8rade

I did manage to put this back together somewhat using screws.

tmoe

I had a somewhat similar problem with my golf r front bumper (my attachment tabs were completely torn off), took it to a couple of repair shops and they all said "new" bumper as you can't glue these back together. It was going to be over $1500, bumper, labor paint...

I was disappointed but I was going to pay out that much money I did a little searching on youtube and found many videos of how to repair a torn tab on a plastic bumper cover. Depends how handy you are but I took the front bumper cover off, cleaned up the areas around where the tear was, created a couple of new tabs and then attached the new tab with the bumper cover with plastic epoxy and fiberglass. Then took out the dremel to get everything cleaned, smooth and in alignment with where the holes needed to be and it worked great; Its stronger then OEM, it's been on for over 1 1/2 years 10,000 miles winter and summer and its still strong without any issues.

gamegenie

I wonder how much the S3's 25 mm lowered suspension also contributed to this incident.

irenesbob

Probably about 25 mm's worth - lol!
Seriously, you raise a good point that many do not think of when getting the sportier versions of various cars. Even a simple driveway pitch can be a challenge when the car is very low to the ground. In the Northeast where I live a lot of the old "quaint" villages have 8" to 10" high stone curbs which may have been OK with horse drawn carriages and 1940's era big American cars. But in a modern car, just getting the door open when parallel parked is sometimes tough without parking 2 feet from the curb. Form and function frequently fight each other.