UrScubed

Europa blue with a black interior heats up pretty quickly in July/August ;-)

4Driver4

Gotta be careful with that. That would move the IC backward and might mess with pipe fitment.

UrS4boy

But maybe, having a softer crumple zone with the Euro bumpers would actually be better. Anybody want to do some testing?

UrScubed

Email from Brendan Rudack:

Our UrS4 FMIC kit was designed to fit on north American spec cars. The European Australia market uses a bumper that has far less room between the AC condenser and components inside the bumper. No one has ever tried to test fit our FMIC behind a euro bumper to my knowledge. I have spoken with an overseas owner who took some measurements and the consensus was it wouldn't work. There was a slim possibility with enough trimming of the inner bumper plastic honeycomb (I have never seen this first hand), some mild spacing of the bumper cover (which risks having a mis-alignment between the fender edge and bumper cover) that it may work but alas shipping costs got in the way of a test fit.

A US bumper with the LLtek lower will work, but the center grill on the LLtek needs to be trimmed so it isn't so deep. I recall about a inch of the grill depth needs to be removed.

I hope I have answered your questions adequately. If you have any more, feel free to email me personally.

Sincerely,

Brendan Rudack
CEO - Manufacturing Engineer
Apikol -Performance Automotive Components

ThetaTau87

The stamping is heat staked to the bumper cover. The reason for the lighter bumper beam is that the Euro bumper doesn't need to meet the 5mph bumper requirements for US and Canada. The bumper beam mounts are solid cast aluminum on the Euro and not the shock absorber type on NA models.

Above 10-15 mph the bumper does nothing for crash protection. At very low speed (< 5mph) the NA version is designed to absorb the shock and not damage anything but the cosmetic bumper face.

I took some measurements before the swap, but because of the shape of the S6+ bumper it is very hard to measure how much space is between the beam and AC condenser. My best estimate is that you loose about 1.5"-2" of clearance. A FMIC should fit with minor trimming of the "U" section of the stamped reinforment. The lost strength could be regained by adding a thicker piece of flat aluminum across the section that was trimmed. Welding it on may warp/melt the plastic bumper cover, but it could be bonded on as well.

Eventually I will ad a Apikol FMIC. I'm not too worried about making it fit.

ThetaTau87

As long as I get to keep the FMIC when the test fit is done. :-)

UrScubed

I'll probably get a chance to try it- I'm going to order the Apikol FMIC for my 95.5 and a local S6 Avant owner is interested in a Euro front bumper.

Hopefully we'll have both in the same place at the same time so we can try test fitting the bumper over the Apikol to see where the clearance issues are.