[magicvii]

Anyone tried swapping their 2020 front grill to the 2023 ones? Seems that the shapes are identical but I see the camera spot of the 2023 ones is a bit higher up than the 2020 ones.

[bloozemanAZ]

Originally Posted by magicvii

Anyone tried swapping their 2020 front grill to the 2023 ones? Seems that the shapes are identical but I see the camera spot of the 2023 ones is a bit higher up than the 2020 ones.

If that is the case, i.e., the camera location is different it definitely won't work. There are no historical threads on such a grill swap although several on swapping the standard M850i grill for the M8 OEM grill.

[jeezz]

Just wanted to open a new thread for this. I tried this and it will not work out of the box...

From the shape they look identical, but from the mounting points they are not. Also the bottom of the new grill is going deeper inside the car, so it will hit the active grill behind before it goes into place... (LCI cars don't have active grill anymore)

The camera fit's in the bracket of the new grill without a problem.

Maybe someone has some more experience? Will it fit if the active grill is removed?

[magicvii]

Originally Posted by jeezz

Just wanted to open a new thread for this. I tried this and it will not work out of the box...

From the shape they look identical, but from the mounting points they are not. Also the bottom of the new grill is going deeper inside the car, so it will hit the active grill behind before it goes into place... (LCI cars don't have active grill anymore)

The camera fit's in the bracket of the new grill without a problem.

Maybe someone has some more experience? Will it fit if the active grill is removed?

Thank you for the inputs! Did you take it to the dealer for the swap? Re: active grill - kind of a noob question: is it allowed to remove it? Wondering why the LCI cars don’t have it anymore.

[jeezz]

No Dealer, I tried myself. I think they wouldn't even mess around with it, since they know the part does not fit for pre LCI.

So with the active grill removal, if it's your car, you can do with it what you want. But I have to say, I don't really want to mess around with it... even if it should be no problem since the LCI does not have it anyway.

But like I said that's not the only problem, also the mounting points do not fit.

[jeezz]

So since I don't wanted to mess with the active grill I put in like 2 days of work and made a complete custom grill...

I had to cut the bottom back of the new grill so it doesn't hit the active grill behind, after that I also had to cut the "bars" and move them about 1 cm forward + cut the original mounting points of the bars, because they are also hitting some areas behind... so I had to "plastic weld" the bars back in place.

Also like I said the new grill has a few mounting points around that will not fit the original points. So these also had to be removed and customized.

Next point is, in the new grill the camera is mounted higher, this will hit the "pedestrian sensor" that is mounted there behind the original grill.. so I moved that down like 5cm and screwed it there.

The result looks ok to me, it's not a snug fit in every place but it's solid and will not fall off.

The active grill is working normally.

Just in case anyone also want's to try doing this, it's a pain in the arse!

[magicvii]

Originally Posted by jeezz

So since I don't wanted to mess with the active grill I put in like 2 days of work and made a complete custom grill...

I had to cut the bottom back of the new grill so it doesn't hit the active grill behind, after that I also had to cut the "bars" and move them about 1 cm forward + cut the original mounting points of the bars, because they are also hitting some areas behind... so I had to "plastic weld" the bars back in place.

Also like I said the new grill has a few mounting points around that will not fit the original points. So these also had to be removed and customized.

Next point is, in the new grill the camera is mounted higher, this will hit the "pedestrian sensor" that is mounted there behind the original grill.. so I moved that down like 5cm and screwed it there.

The result looks ok to me, it's not a snug fit in every place but it's solid and will not fall off.

The active grill is working normally.

Just in case anyone also want's to try doing this, it's a pain in the arse!

Wow it looks great, congrats! Would you mind elaborating on the mounting points adjustments? I actually had my dealer working on it and they were stopped by the mounting point differences.

[Accentu8]

Originally Posted by jeezz

Just wanted to open a new thread for this. I tried this and it will not work out of the box...

From the shape they look identical, but from the mounting points they are not. Also the bottom of the new grill is going deeper inside the car, so it will hit the active grill behind before it goes into place... (LCI cars don't have active grill anymore)

The camera fit's in the bracket of the new grill without a problem.

Maybe someone has some more experience? Will it fit if the active grill is removed?

The active grill on the 23 is the bottom grill