Rear bumper TRIM replacement

[kurious]

Last month our Air incurred a bad deep scuff in the rear bumper.
Though 30" wide, the damage was 99% limited to the glossy black trim piece, below the body-colored bumper cover.
This trim piece is the same on all Air models, and contains four object/motion sensors (LIDAR?) and two snap-in red reflectors.
A Lucid-certified body shop wrote up an estimate of $8k, basically removing a dozen parts aft of the rear wheels.
They would not or could not just sell me the trim piece.

But my (awesome) local Lucid service center could and did.
Just over $700 including sales tax.
The challenge was getting the original trim piece off.
It's held in with 28 tabs, the upper middle 12 of which are designed to click in but not pull out, since you can't access them from behind to push them down to release them.
If you use too much force you risk breaking off the slotted plastic tabs from the adjacent bumper cover, leading to a much bigger repair.
I used some plastic "spudging tools" starting on the bottom and working outward.
Patience paid off, took me ~30 minutes to get the old one off.
Transplanted the four sensors and two reflectors into the new trim piece, ten minutes to line it up (the upper center-right tab has left-right arrows, that's the one to carefully line up in its slot.

DM me if you want tips or photos.
Great to have my AIr "as good as new" again!

 

[DeaneG]

Nice repair! Those are ultrasonic parking sensors.

 

[yhenry]

Last month our Air incurred a bad deep scuff in the rear bumper.
Though 30" wide, the damage was 99% limited to the glossy black trim piece, below the body-colored bumper cover.
This trim piece is the same on all Air models, and contains four object/motion sensors (LIDAR?) and two snap-in red reflectors.
A Lucid-certified body shop wrote up an estimate of $8k, basically removing a dozen parts aft of the rear wheels.
They would not or could not just sell me the trim piece.

But my (awesome) local Lucid service center could and did.
Just over $700 including sales tax.
The challenge was getting the original trim piece off.
It's held in with 28 tabs, the upper middle 12 of which are designed to click in but not pull out, since you can't access them from behind to push them down to release them.
If you use too much force you risk breaking off the slotted plastic tabs from the adjacent bumper cover, leading to a much bigger repair.
I used some plastic "spudging tools" starting on the bottom and working outward.
Patience paid off, took me ~30 minutes to get the old one off.
Transplanted the four sensors and two reflectors into the new trim piece, ten minutes to line it up (the upper center-right tab has left-right arrows, that's the one to carefully line up in its slot.

DM me if you want tips or photos.
Great to have my AIr "as good as new" again!

That's awesome work!

 

[Buffalo Bob]

Wow! Well done! Is it hard for you to sit on that wallet with an extra $7,300 in it?

 

[kurious]

Wow! Well done! Is it hard for you to sit on that wallet with an extra $7,300 in it?

It was looking like my insurer was going to get to part with that much, and then I'd ultimately reimburse them with premium premiums... I'm sure they'll find some other basis for raising mine.
Main thing for me is, I'm not a fan of this new local body shop, who's doesn't care what the customer wants done/not done.

 

[Buffalo Bob]

It was looking like my insurer was going to get to part with that much, and then I'd ultimately reimburse them with premium premiums... I'm sure they'll find some other basis for raising mine.
Main thing for me is, I'm not a fan of this new local body shop, who's doesn't care what the customer wants done/not done.

Yeah... You can really get a double whammy these days. The insurance companies are having a field day, and a lot of it comes back to the body shops having their field day. None of that is Lucid specific either. I even ended up dropping my glass coverage. The glass premium looks good from an incremental $$ perspective, but then it is viewed as a (God forbid) 'claim', and they use the dreaded 'C' word to raise your premiums as if you deliberately tanked the car.

 

[terrycs]

Last month our Air incurred a bad deep scuff in the rear bumper.
Though 30" wide, the damage was 99% limited to the glossy black trim piece, below the body-colored bumper cover.
This trim piece is the same on all Air models, and contains four object/motion sensors (LIDAR?) and two snap-in red reflectors.
A Lucid-certified body shop wrote up an estimate of $8k, basically removing a dozen parts aft of the rear wheels.
They would not or could not just sell me the trim piece.

But my (awesome) local Lucid service center could and did.
Just over $700 including sales tax.
The challenge was getting the original trim piece off.
It's held in with 28 tabs, the upper middle 12 of which are designed to click in but not pull out, since you can't access them from behind to push them down to release them.
If you use too much force you risk breaking off the slotted plastic tabs from the adjacent bumper cover, leading to a much bigger repair.
I used some plastic "spudging tools" starting on the bottom and working outward.
Patience paid off, took me ~30 minutes to get the old one off.
Transplanted the four sensors and two reflectors into the new trim piece, ten minutes to line it up (the upper center-right tab has left-right arrows, that's the one to carefully line up in its slot.

DM me if you want tips or photos.
Great to have my AIr "as good as new" again!

Nice! Pretty sure you would get a lot of hits if you made a How to video on YouTube.