The plastic grill is held on by sort of "tension washers". If I pry these off, are they reusable?

Also, did I read somewhere that the grill may be glued or stuck in place and therefor hard to remove? If so, do I need some black calk to put it back on after painting? Thanks.

 

Yep, If you're careful you can reuse them.

You need also some black calk or other glue to glue the sides after you're painted it and are re-installing it.

P.S. Be VERY slow and careful when prying off the sides, that glue is pretty sticky but the grill can be removed in one piece if you're careful.

 

Cladd;

The washers can be removed and reused if you are careful. Use a small screw driver to get into one of the slots and rotate them off. If necessary once they are off, you can hit them slightly with a hammer to close them back up a bit to reuse them. My advice, go buy some new ones as they can't be that expensive and do not necessarily have to come from Porsche. They are fairly common clips that should be available in any good auto parts store

As for the grill, its a pain to get off as its glued on very solidly and you can break some fragile parts of the grill if you just reef on it. Some folks say they have managed to use a knife to cut the adhesive... I was not very successful when I tried this as I could not get my knife far enough under the grill edge and it was very difficult to cut . What I did was slightly heat up the edges of the plastic grill with a heat gun to soften the adhesivea bit. I then inserted a flat screw driver between the grill and the plastic surround and pryed up (will applying a gentle pulling motion working a section at a time). Note that this method will slightly damage the painted plastic surround, but in my case it was not needed, all I wanted was the grill.

Cheers;
Eric

P.S. If your remounting the grill, you can choose to use adhesive (caulking) or not. I have heard that the clips would likely be adequate but I will likely use a bit of caulking or some good double sided tape and the clips to reinstall mine on my new wing.

 

I used a one of those razor blade holders (with a razor blade) and cut thru the caulk w/o any problems. It still took some time and care to get the grille off. I used black caulk when I re-installed just because that's the way it was installed.

 

Don't know if this applies as I have never taken a grill off and don't have a clue what the process looks like, but, we use this trick for getting really sticky (industrial strength) double sided tape off of the backs of boards hung on walls. You use dental floss to get between the surfaces and use like a saw essentially sawing the adhesive in half. If you do try this then make sure you wear gloves as it will cut your hands.

If this can't be done in this situation then I apologize for taking bandwidth.