This was an after thought, so realize all images are after the install and taken with a cameraphone, so use your imagination on some steps.
first how it looks:
I was aiming for something that didnt look ridiculous, and didnt look cheap.
I think this is something decent, and if painted to match the body, it would be less noticeable.
It holds the bumper very tight the way I have done this, and as far as I can tell the bumper fitment is very close to OEM.
Ok, so basically you have to take the headlights and bumper off like you would normally have too. (should know how to do this)
The biggest PITA part for most people is the two side clips, which is what this mod eliminates mostly.
some cars are somewhat easy to get these off, and others (like mine) are a total nightmare to remove. Just deal with it this one last time
Once the bumper is removed, I then removed the black clips from the car to modify. (just pry it off without bending the bender)
Here's a picture of what I've done to the passenger side:
once removed from the fender, you can turn this piece around and use a torx bit to remove the white pegs that hold it to the fender.
I removed a single white clip so that i had a hole to use for the quik-latch stud.
I then completely cut off the top two black clips that are part of this black plastic piece and hold the bumper to the fender
(i did this very sloppily and would suggest a dremel)
This allows the bumper to still have the bottom clip and black piece for correct space-ment (thats a word now) and fitment from the fender, along with a-lot of support.
(i originally tried this without the black piece at all, and yes it does work, but the entire weight of the sides of the bumper are then resting on the single pin, if you want to go this route, I would recommend a second pin)
I then reattached the black piece to the fender as it just clips in, reach my hand around and attach the bolt & stud sections from the kit.
here's a picture from the back side:
(NOTE: I have a cone filter aka hot air intake, and have completely removed the air box, this might be significantly trickier with the air box in, I'm not sure)
also, when installing the pins on the drivers side, the washer fluid reservoir may seem like its in the way. the way i solved this was removing the very top nut holding the washer and power steering fluid reservoirs to the inside of the fender and you can then pivot the washer reservoir every so slightly towards the front of the car to get the stud by. the best solution would be to then cut the stud to the correct length so you don't have this slight pivot on the reservoir. I did not do this. There are other mounting points for the reservoirs and I'll probably fix it later.
Before you go crazy and start drilling the outside of the bumper, take a look inside the bumper and realize you have to do some slight dremel cutting in here as well to allow access to the latches.
feel free to do this how ever you'd like. I removed quite a bit of material. but this was because after numerous times test fitting i realized its much easier to remove this large section to line everything up and place the pin into the latch.
example:
Once this is done and you have the pin correctly attached, everything trimmed, you can then finally start lining up the bumper and preparing to drill.
This takes the longest time, I used a large variety of blue tape, rulers, string, markers, to make sure everything is perfect.
you want the pins to hold the bumper in the correct position (obviously) but you also want to have some pressure holding the bumper rebar onto the supports so its not flopping around in the wind or whatever loose bumpers do.
Also realize the latches have a somewhat wide angle of grabbing the pin, so just figure it out.
bad case scenario: you messed up slightly and your gap is too large or too small just a hair. Lucky for you the fender is somewhat bendable and the pin is very hard to bend, you can bend where the fender and pin meet ever so slightly without deforming anything too much to fix the fitment.
Worse case scenario: you really messed up and its not even close, i would suggest trying to drill a whole in the fender area and moving the pin, like i said the latch "seems" to have a wide angle of grabbing, so this is your best bet. but don't quote me, I took some time to do this so situation wouldn't happen.
some pictures of where my latches ended up:
And a video for everyone who wanted to see how easy this is:
For the people the mention the security issue: the two mounting points for the long bolts that connect the rebar to the bumper are never even touched and the bolts can be installed again if desired, therefor having mostly the same amount of security as a stock bumper without those side clips.
So much for a quick write up, this is way longer than i wanted it to be.
I'm still trying to figure out a way to put some sort of single hidden quick release system in the front middle that is easily accessible but not easily seen by a passerby to keep security (not necessarily a quik-latch). So I'm taking all advise on something along those lines before I try to figure something out.
any questions or anything, let me know
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Originally Posted by bobkatkat
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