# Side Skirt Replacement



## J55TTC (Apr 25, 2005)

Hi all,

As there was a limited amount of information on this subject I decided to document a recent repair.

I aquired a dent in the offside side skirt that was not repairable through paintless dent repair. The side skirt is made of aluminium and unfortunately the dent stretched the metal. Also the chap at excel dents advised that the paint would more than likely bruise and a respray would be needed.

Next option was to get some quotes from a few body repair shops, cheapest being Â£303 ex VAT! This was to replace the skirt with a new one from Audi (Â£68 ex VAT), paint it (Â£80 ex VAT) and fit it (Â£155 ex VAT including misc. items). Dunno what these misc. items were but never mind.

With it being so close to x-mas I decided that there must be a cheaper option and upon further investigation I managed the following:

Â£60 - Side skirt in matching body colour off a 2002 model from a breakers advertising on ebay - absolutely mint condition!
Â£36 - New sill plate from ebay (the black tread plate bit with the TT logo on. Even came with the original foam adhesive and white clips ready to fit.

Okay so the labour was free as I decided to do it myself with the help of a good friend.










This shows the old foam adhesive that needed to be removed from the replacement skirt. This was difficult and patience was of the essence. The best tool for the job was a craft knife.










Once removed and clean it looked like this:










Removal of the skirt on the car was quite straight forwards. I first masked the paint near the black trim panel to avoid scratches and used a sharpened paint scraper. I just worked it all the way through applying a moderate amount of pressure:










The black trim is also held in place by 4 white clips, 1 at the front end of the trim and 3 at the rear

Front clip:










rear clips:










There is one clip missing from this photo but you can see the slot for it above and to the left of the left most clip.
These clips popped out effortlessly and in the following picture you can see where they locate themselves on the car:










The yellow circles highlight where the clips locate and the red circles are some of the torq screws that hold the skirt to the car.

You will need to remove the front and rear wheelarch lining, but only enough to gain access to the screws holding the skirt on. I removed 5 torx screws from the rear as its not as flexible as the front, and I removed 3 from the front.

The skirt is held in place by 2 x 10mm screws behind the front wheelarch lining which are straight forward to remove. There are also two clips there that secure it in place:










Held on at the rear by 2 torx screws:










There are 6 torx screws under the black trim plate:










The remaining torx screws are on the underside of the car and covered in waxoyl stuff. Scrape off as little as possible to gain access the the screws and thats all the screws out.

I found that because of the wayoyl stuff, the skirt was stuck to the underside of the car. My good friend made up a little tool to help get this off:










Just a small peice of metal plate bent at 90 degrees and held with a pair of mole grips. You can insert it at the front on the underside and slide it all the way to the back - hey presto the skirt fell off!

Once youve got this far, putting the new one on is just the reverse of the above. the new black trim plate is easier to fit from the front first, locate the front clip and insert the rear clips last. It was a bit fiddly and I ended up sticking the little white clips in as they kept falling out. I would recommend the use of axle stands as this makes life a lot easier:

All in all it took about 4 hours but we were taking our time and there were a few tea breaks :roll: There are a couple of other reference photos in the fotki folder

Hope this comes in handy.

Joss.


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## John-H (Jul 13, 2005)

Well documented and explained with good pictures! Excellent help for anyone doing it themselves 

By the way, what did you use for repairing the underseal?


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## J55TTC (Apr 25, 2005)

Hi John-H,

I used some of this stuff:










Should have mentioned it in the original post really but needed to get off the pc in a hurry. There are a number of black grommits on the inderside that can be removed to spray this stuff in. Messy but worth the piece of mind. I also applied some along the seam of the new skirt on the underside of the car.


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## keith (Feb 15, 2009)

great right up this should help a few people.

keith


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## was8v (Feb 8, 2009)

Are you sure these are made of aluminium on your car?

Mine have gone rusty, so defo steel!

Mine is an early car tho, maybe they had problems with rust and changed to alloy or something?


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## YELLOW_TT (Feb 25, 2004)

Good job and a great write up


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## Bindo (May 21, 2013)

Hey, great post BTW and completely explains how to replace the metal sill !! FYI mine have went rusty also on a 52 plate 225 ? SO yeah must be steal ? I called a garage and they quoted me £1100 to repalce and respray etc etc I think this seems extream steap !! They are sayig its over £310 simply for the TT Logo kick plates  So my question is, can we just replace the sill and not the kick plate , would this work , why did you replace the pastic insert adn kick plate part ? Your advice is apreciated


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## J55TTC (Apr 25, 2005)

You can use the original kick plate but you will have to remove the adhesive foam and buy some sort of replacement. Doable but at the time I picked up the kick plate cheap.


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## OscarTango (Dec 14, 2008)

thanks for writing this down...helped me perform the side skirt-ectomy in about 2 hours .

I didn't get a new kickplate, and I'll leave the install of the new side-skirt to the dealers. I ordered a new one, had it sprayed by them and planned to install it myself, but seeing as I noticed the spray foam, and double adhesive between the sill and sideskirt, new clips needed etc... I' drive the car to the dealers and let them do it. I'd probably scratch the new skirt in the process....


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## t'mill (Jul 31, 2012)

Very good write up this op. Even I'd have a stab at following your how-to if needed.


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## jamman (May 6, 2002)

A blast from the past and just the information I need thank you.

Search worked who would have thought that.


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## carjunky (Jul 11, 2014)

What was it you used again to coat the underside? The image isn't displaying and I didn't see a name called out other than a spray foam. Great write-up by the way.


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## Volcom (Apr 24, 2014)

I would like to know the above too.

Anyone know?


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## John-H (Jul 13, 2005)

I can't remember what Joss used for underseal but he talks about spraying it and the link he posted was to an MG specialist site. They still have product showing but have obviously changed the picture.

http://www.mgocspares.co.uk/acatalog/MG ... __112.html

I'm guessing it was Waxoil. There's a clear and a black spray on version and a thicker brush on one in black.

The proper Audi underseal is a rubberised light grey spray on sealant available from Audi in a cartridge for an application system but you can pour some out and brush it on or spray it. I'm not sure if they put on anything else to make it dark (mine's black) or if that's just the final body colour paint over spray in final factory preparation. Repair work may differ.


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## Volcom (Apr 24, 2014)

Thanks for the info on this one. Do you know what was used the stick the TT logo kick panel back on?


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## cam69 (Dec 22, 2011)

Volcom said:


> Thanks for the info on this one. Do you know what was used the stick the TT logo kick panel back on?


They have clips that you should be able to use again. They also have some double sided sticky strips when you buy them new but I just clipped mine back down and they were fine.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## Volcom (Apr 24, 2014)

Cool thank you.


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## warrenstuart (Mar 3, 2010)

Nice write up and bookmarked as i'm going to be doing this soon.

Warren.


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## DTH (Sep 24, 2015)

This post is just what I'm looking for! Also - reminded me I'll need underseal.


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## BrianB (Apr 15, 2016)

Thought I would just add to this having done it recently on a 15 year old car, I found that on each side one of the 2 torx screws had seized into the nut insert and ended up having to pull the whole insert out as the insert was turning with the torx screw.

To get over this problem I found that by dressing back the wheel arch skin as best as possible to make it flat again where the nut insert had pulled through the original hexagonal hole was actually not to bad.

I was then able to install a new nut insert PN N90252104 with a hand rivet nut tool from Amazon with the addition of a washer to give extra material thickness for the insert to pull up against. In this case the upper attachment point shown in the picture below.

Hope this helps if anyone else experiences the same thing when removing their sill covers.


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