RicardoD

My car is from the Pacific Northwest of the United States. Both my cars are. Lots of rain but no salt on the roads and minimal sun exposure. No rust anywhere on my cars so it makes the cars very easy to work on.
Bumper bolts broke free very easily.

xeps

Maybe I was just unlucky, but the large allen head bolts securing the bumper would not budge on my car.

My impact wrench wouldn't do it, so I ended up having to use a long long long cheater bar. Those of you who are planning to do the job soon - might be worth tossing some penetrating oil up there...

Michael D'Silva

an old thread, but just wanted to say thanks as I just did this in preparation for dropping the motor.
My allen head bolts came out fine using my cordles impact wrench.
Bumper then takes a little wiggling to get it off the mounts and you can lower it gently.

Be ready for a lot of crud!

Sometimes I wish my whole garage had a stainless steel floor with a big drain in the middle so I could degrease and hose it all away...

financd964

Pulling a rear bumper is easy, putting it back on is a MF'er

greg1990964

Only if you dont do it the shock way. Trying to line it up on the bumper itself is a nightmare. I learned by wasting prob 2-4 screwing around with that. Not to mention clear coat scratches in quarters from trying to do it myself.

RicardoD

Agreed, I learned about improved shock removal method after I wrote this up. When you reinstall the shock tubes act as an alignment guide.

financd964

Yeah I just took off the skin to clean in there. Nightmare.

LPMM

Ricardo, can you elaborate on this? What is your "improved shock removal method"? I plan on taking my rear bumper off this winter for a repaint and I was thinking of just the skin but it seems that I'd be better off pulling the whole assembly. BTW, thanks for the excellent pictures.

RicardoD

LPMM,

I haven't done it but you remove the "rear impact shocks" holding the bumper on. part stays with the car and part stays with the bumper. When you reinstall you are basically inserting shock posts back into the tubes in the car. It simplifies alignment when you re-install. Its in a thread somewhere so you should be able to search it out.

Laker

Just saw this thread now, nice work Ricardo!

HalV

I wasn't able to find the other thread on how to remove the bumper, so I'd like to clarify, is the preferred method to remove the 4 bolts referenced by the green arrows rather than removing the big bolts reference by the red arrow?

Navaros911

I've done this once, to fix the license plate lights. I recall just undoing two large allen bolts. They go vertically through the impact tube thingy. The ones the red arrows are pointing at. It was pretty easy as far as I remember. One afternoon and it was off AND on again with lights working again. So couldn't have been too hard.


I should've read the rest of the thread first.
You want to do it differently to make sure it's aligned properly.

HalV

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, I "think" the idea is that if you take the 4 smaller bolts off (vs. the two large allen bolts) it's easier to put back on?

crg53

Just so you know, there is also a 6 mm nut at the end of the shock, that needs to come off before you can remove the whole assembly, it's easy to get to if you know it's there, you can see it if you look in from the side behind the shock. :

HERE is a link that shows the nut, it's item # 5.

Gelignite

Are the shock absorbing supports just a USA or later year addition? Mine is a 1990 UK car and i have got this all apart at the moment (big bolt method) and no sign of any shock absorbing. Just a solid bracket fitting into the chassis leg. My near side is a mess but the offside is completely uncorroded due to the dirt being full of oil that side.