Hi all,

I recently grazed a concrete poll in an underground parking lot, and thus need to refinish my front bumper. I decided it would be best to pull it off the car and leave it with a shop to prevent any tapping lines, and to spare all the seams/rubber seals.

So i thought i would make a quick instruction set on how to do it should someone need. Unfortunately i took the pics after removing the bumper, but will do my best to describe how to do it.

Tools - flat head screw driver + socket set.


Pic 1 - Car without bumper


Pic 2 (STEP 1) - pop the hood and remove all the plastic pop rivets with the screwdriver. There are more to either side of the pic (hence the arrows)

Pic 3 (STEP 2) - near both front corners there will be two bolts attached to a plastic bar bellow the bumper (what im holding in my hand) - remove these

Pic 4 (STEP 3) - As you can also see in the previous pic (pic 3) there is a third bolt going into the plastic bar from the fender. To get to it, pull back the rubber seal along the fender (need to pop 1 plastic/rubber rivet with a screwdriver). Next use a socket extension to get to the bolt from behind as shown in the pic. Remove the bolt and be careful not to drop it. Now pull the bumper forward and remove the plastic bar im holding in pic 3. Do this for both sides.

Pic 5 (STEP 4) Get bellow the car and remove all the metal bolts along the front edge of the bumpter and all those that surround the wheel well. These are also the bolts that hold the black plastic splash guards for the wheel wells and for the under body cover. The plastic black trim pieces you see in the picture are held by three such bolts. Remove them and remove the black trim piece. Remove all the bolts holding the main engine undercover along the bumper edge, and around the wheel wells. You DONT have to remove the bolts in the middle section nor do you have to remove the plastic push rivots. What you need is enough bolts loose so that you can bend the central cover and have space to move the splash covers from the wheel wells freely.

Next remove the platic push rivots holding the front 1/2 splah guard in the wheel wells. There's quite a few of them, what your doing here is getting enough play in the front splash guard to slid it toward the mid line of the car so that you can get access to the two last bolts holding the bumper. You do not have to remove any of the covers, but just substantially loosen them to get enough play.



Will continue in next post

 

Pic 6 and 7 (STEP 5) With the splash guards in the wheel wells loosened and moved towards the mid line you will have acess to the last two bolts holding the bumper. Both require an extension to get to, but the one more towards the front needs an even longer extension (~8 inches worth). Remove these two bolts on both sides (4 in total)

STEP 6 gently pull the bumper off. It will be snug around the lower mid line corners of the headlights but add a little pressure and it comes right off.

with the bumper off you can now remove the grill - 5 hex nuts then push it out.


Hope this helps a bit.

feel free to ask questions

 

good write up

 

Thanks! This is going to be useful.

EDIT: Since we're getting so many good DIY posts, we should really just create ONE that have links to all the other DIY posts and just "STICKY" that one. So it's not going to be so clustered, but will be organized.