Rear fascia not fitting back on properly

[jawn101]

Earlier this week, I removed my rear fascia to do some engine work. Now the engine is all put back together and working, and it's time to get the car drivable again. But now that the fascia is re-attached, the lower engine cover won't close - the fascia intrudes into it about 1/8". I have already adjusted the engine cover so it sits as far back in the engine bay as possible and no real help.

Here's what I did to reinstall it:
- Placed it on top of the impact absorber
- Attached the studs through the underside reinforcement plate to get it centered
- Re-attached the bolts that hold the fascia to the pontoons (both the L-bracket and the smaller bolts that go through into the pontoons themselves)

Everything looks straight and correct, but it's just not fitting properly. Anyone have any insight? :)

One thing I did notice, there are two bolts on each side that hold the fascia to the L brackets. The upper ones threaded easily and were plenty long enough. The lower ones required some cajoling to be juuuuuust long enough to thread once so that I could wrench them down. Everything fit perfectly well before I took it off...

[jawn101]

Turned out this was my own dumb fault. I wasn't "interpreting" the workshop manual well, and was trying to save time by putting the rear reinforcing panel and fascia back on as a single unit. Bad idea, the reinforcing panel got caught up on the impact absorber and was causing all my fitment problems. Doing the pieces one at a time gave me a chance to align the engine cover latch, fix some pontoon bolts, AND get the fascia lined up better than I think it ever was. Just took a lot longer, but it wouldn't have been as bad without trying to shortcut it in the first place :)

The car's a car again! She's a quick coolant bleed from being back on the road and better than ever.

[sdg3205]

Interesting!

My fit is awful. I'm going to try this.

Thanks!

[jawn101]

Interesting!

My fit is awful. I'm going to try this.

Thanks!

There's definitely a certain amount of fit issues attributable to the poor tolerances of the fiberglass body tub, but this really helped me clean it up a little bit :)

[outatym2001]

Hey jawn101 glad to hear you got it together.
I can’t explain it but in the picture below is what I had to do to make the Rear Fascia fit properly after I removed it. And now my Engine Cover closes just fine again.
You will see a one inch outside diameter rubber hose I had to shove in between the Rear Closing Panel (101477) and the black covered Rear Bumper (100599).
Without that one inch hose the black Rear Closing Panel would move around then the top of the Fascia was hitting the Engine Cover preventing it from closing.