Trunk Spoiler Install

Here's the finished work so you can marvel at my mechanical skills.

If I started sooner I could have used that one for April Fool's Day?

Now on to the real install, here of course is the virgin deck lid before it becomes violated.

And here of course is the "ACME" rear spoiler still in the box.

Now we begin by removing the trunk liner. First, we take off the rubber strips at the bottom edge of the trunk. They are held on by 3 rubber tips. One pulls out and the other 2 slide into "keyhole" slots. One on each side.

There are several style plastic fasteners that Acura uses throughout their cars. This plastic mushroom type is typical and a common fastener used by many manufacturers especially for trim parts.

What appears to be a phillips screw is in fact another plastic fasteners shaped as one. The washer is actaully attached to a wedge shaped plug that must also be removed. Honestly, I don't know why these exist as the previous mushroom style could have worked here? Either way, out they come...

After all the fasteners and underside trunk liner have been removed, we are left with one unadorned trunk lid.

Both threaded rubber stops must be removed, one of the holes are shown here.

On each side of the trunk, there will be 3 mounting holes for the spoiler. Acura has embossed 2 of the 3 holes on each side.

If you look closely just below the empty threaded stopper hole, you can see one of the embossed circles (in the white paint) where one of the spoiler mounting holes will be drilled.

We mark each circle with a felt tip marker and center punch before drilling.

After a great deal of re-reading the instructions (several times), measuring each hole (several more times) and praying to the "God of Acura" that they have written these instructions correctly, we begin...

Of course not before the obligatory repeating of the mantra; "this is not a $30,000 car, its only sheetmetal," "this is not a $30,000 car, its only sheetmetal..."

We then drill our holes.

It does feel funny drilling from the underside through to the top but greater accuracy is assured this way.

Next we deburr the holes to clean them up a little.

OK, here's where it got real fun. IF you looked at the instructions I posted at the top, Honda is not real clear about how many holes you need to drill and on which side.

I almost lost it here, but remembered the cardinal rule of DIY; "measure twice, drill once." In this case I had to re-read the instructions several times to interpret what they wanted and even then it was somewhat vague.

In the end, I went to the spoiler and looked at the mounting studs and could see that it would need two holes on each side for the studs and an additional hole on each side for a large screw that is driven in from the under side.

The 4th hole is needed ONLY on the LEFT SIDE. I had to keep reminding myself as the template gets used for both sides by flipping it over. You can see where I marked on it to remember the number of holes needed for each side.

BTW, anyone know what language they spell center as "senter?"

We mark again with felt tip pen and center punch.

Now for the right side...

With the exception of the "4th hole" which is only on the left side and used for the wire harness, all the holes drilled are through holes.

The wire harness hole is only drilled through the top skin. To be sure the drill doesn't go too deep, I mark the bit at .400" from the end with some masking tape.