Ok, 2002 A4:
So I screwed up my bumper a bit in a parking lot today. I parked in a spot that was facing downhill with a curb at the low end. The front bumper caught while I was trying to back out, and it came off part way. The right side came unclipped, and a few plastic tabs broke. The little grill thing around the right fog light and the one in the center popped out, but I recovered them and snapped everything back together. It feels pretty secure and I didn't hear it flapping around at all while driving home.

However, one of the tabs that broke off of the lower bumper was one that screwed onto the body, and it looks like I lost about three snappy tabs. I'm not sure if this has happened before to the previous owner or if I just broke them all.

My questions are:
How concerned should I be? It took moderate force to put it back in place, and it felt quite solid when I jerked it around to see if it would come off. Does it need further repairs to prevent it from coming off on the freeway?

Also, how hard is it to take the bumper apart and glue the broken screw tab back on? Since the broken off part is screwed to the body, I should be able to do this, provided it doesn't take all day to take the bumper apart.

See pic (front plate removed shortly after purchase, allowing center grill to pop out)


[IMG]local://upfiles/41002/EFC5394A47894942B663B1474524EB59.jpg[/IMG]

 

some of my tabs are broken, its not a big deal, but after a while your bumer might pop out a little mroe fromt he rest of the body, on my car its like 5 mm by the wheel well. nothing too serious

 

i had almost the same thing happen to me. i pulled too far over a curb so that the front bumper was over it and when i backed out part of it got caught and it broke some of those taps and stuff off. i think mine was a little worse though because i actually broke some pieces of the bumper not just the taps so i had to do a little bonda action haha. but i got mine pretty solid and having had any trouble with it. just check it every now and then to make sure everythings staying in

 

Thanks guys, I'll keep an eye on it.

 

The B6 has a little bit more complex bumper than the B5, it takes a little longer to pull it off but thats what your gonna need to do to re-align the bumper. You probably don't need to buy any new clips, but if you need to thebumper mounts(sides) bolt in with two T25 torx bolts on the B6 so its no big deal.
To take off the bumper remove the front wheels, pull back the front of the fender liner and there will be 3 10mm nuts on each side holding the bumper to the body, take those out. Pull out the lower grilles and remove the two bumper bracket bolts (allan bolts)
Once the bumper is off flip it upsidown, there is two more small T25 torx bolts that hold the lower bumper to the upper bumper (B6 only) if you need to replace the lower bumper thats what you have to do.
Other than that it should take you around 30 minutes to pull the bumper if you haven't done it before.

 

Thanks man. Should I get a new lower bumper or is it good enough to just glue the broken tab back on?

The tab I'm talking about accepts a bolt whose head is not visible as the head end of the bolt faces inwards, towards the car. It's perhaps an inch wide, square, and was formerly part of the same piece of plastic as the lower bumper. I thought I'd plastic weld it back on and then reattach the lower bumper.
The bumper alignment is not bad. The gap between the lower and upper bumpers is a few millimeters wider than it should be at the edge near the wheel well, but I'd just as soon leave it alone for now if it's not going to cause other problems.

 

On my passanger side part of my front bumper it was falling off. I kept pushing it back into the little clip it had. But as i took it off more i realized there was one towrds the front in the middle of the car. It clipped back on and everything was good. But then again that was on a B5.