Great idea. I always cringe when I watch Simon attempt to remove a piece of trim by simply wrenching it with extreme force and hearing all those clips breaking. I added the side steps myself, and after watching his video, I expected to need to replace two dozen or more of the clips in the process. But using a little patience, coaxing and finesse, I only broke two or three. Next time I’ll use the soap method and avoid any breakage.

 

@D-Fens ... I take apart alot of old cars, and I'm a pretty sympathetic mechanic, I rarely damage or break things. I actually put rubber gloves over sockets on every screw/nut/bolt on a vintage Porsche I have (level 10 insanity concours stuff.... it's a disease)

Installing my bullbar on the new Defender was a whole new learning curve... plastics break. I was telling the bodyshop guy about this (and he said "welcome to 2023 cars... it's' not just your Land Rover" or something of the sort). In other words I guess this is just how new stuff is built... not a Land Rover problem per se.

The soap trick is the only thing that worked for me... I think you're right to approach with caution.

FYI when the dealer replaced my X taillights they broke like 4 clips on the left side rear end panel. So even they don't have it perfected.

EDIT: when did I become "old guy / they don't make em like they used to guy"

 

Ah, Nash, seems we have more in common than LRs (or being **** about taking things apart and putting them back together ). My collection currently encompasses 2 1/2 Porsches (the 1/2 is my wife's bug with a 914 motor). More are coming again. :-p

 

I've not done concourse-level stuff, but I have a late 70's BMW motorcycle, so I'm generally very careful with not over torquing things (shakes my fist at the aluminum engine), but yeah - when I swapped in the extended fender arches I was cringing at the breaking plastic connectors. Fortunately all good. I wish they could just go with nuts and bolts but nobody wants to spend the money, and weight is now so important.