If anyone has had the chance to try to loosen the body panel connectors on the 450i you will find they are crappy. They use a plastic screw going into a plastic grommet to hold panels together. The grommet is fine but the plastic screw is worthless as the head strips out before the screw will come out. I was not about to purchase more of the same junk so I did some experimenting. I replaced them with a well-nut. It is a rubber insert with a brass threaded insert molded into it. They are designed to go into a blind hole, add a threaded screw and when tightened it expands the rubber and holds the two pieces together. I have used them in the past on other projects with good success. After removing the damaged connectors I purchased from local hardware store a few of the #8-32 well-nuts with the larger head, the body is 8mm in diameter so the factory hole in the body panels needs to be opened slightly, then well-nut is slipped into the hole and I used stainless steel screws (8-32) and tightened them up....worked better than the factory connectors. I also bought some 5/16 ss washers to slip under the head of the well-nut for added strength. So you might want to consider picking yourself up a handful of these to keep on hand for when you need to remove a body panel connector and find they are stripped out and will be damaged when they are removed.
