Dan, your wife must be a saint! How does she tolerate your car projects? 
Second part of the latest HACK project...
The first half went about as smoothly as a HACK project can go. The second half...Well, let's just say I will NEVER, EVER trust any monkeys at any shop to do work. When you want something done right, do it yourself.
So I wanted to take the rear bumper covers off to adjust the bumper ride height a few MMs higher and take the grills off to painted it matte black instead of blue, and install the two little bumper clips that I bought to hold the bumper flush to the rear quarter panel. The front was a piece of cake so I thought the back would probably not take me more than an hour to do. Got the car jacked up, went underneath the rear bumper to release the two #50 Torx bolt holding down the bumper to the impact absorber bars...And those things are tighted to like 300 ft-lbs or something. Try as I might, hammering away at my rachet wrench the bolts simply would not budge. Those bodyshop IDIOTS that installed the bumper must have use an impact gun at the max setting to put the bolt in. Also last time the car was in the bodyshop I told them to adjust the bumper higher, so they must have just tighten the bolt instead of taking the bolt off, and adjusting the bumper collar by using a 14MM allen wrench.
Now I'm pissed. So I had to remove the grills off the bumper while the bumper is sitting on the car. You can imagine, there's about 30 clips, and some of them lay behind the exhaust and about 6-7 of them lay behind the bumper cover in an area where I couldn't even get a finger through. So I just ended up breaking about half the clips just to get the grill off to repaint. And since I couldn't take the bumper off to install the new clips, I ended up removing the wheel well cover and installing the clips while the bumper is on the car. Big mistake. The clips are designed to work when the bumper is riding properly at factory heights. I got one side in but the other side keep sliding off because it wasn't fitting properly. Ended up ripping a bolt off on the wheel well trying to get it off too.
Installing the painted grill back was a pain and a half since some of part of the grill is in an area behind the fuel tank and there simply isn't room to manuever. Of course, if I could have taken the rear bumper off this would all be a piece of cake.
I'm probably going to buy a new breaker bar with a swivel head just to remove the bumper and do this properly, but MAN the people at the bodyshop are just plain idiots. Should have just let them paint the bumper and I'll install it myself. UUGH!
So I wanted to take the rear bumper covers off to adjust the bumper ride height a few MMs higher and take the grills off to painted it matte black instead of blue, and install the two little bumper clips that I bought to hold the bumper flush to the rear quarter panel. The front was a piece of cake so I thought the back would probably not take me more than an hour to do. Got the car jacked up, went underneath the rear bumper to release the two #50 Torx bolt holding down the bumper to the impact absorber bars...And those things are tighted to like 300 ft-lbs or something. Try as I might, hammering away at my rachet wrench the bolts simply would not budge. Those bodyshop IDIOTS that installed the bumper must have use an impact gun at the max setting to put the bolt in. Also last time the car was in the bodyshop I told them to adjust the bumper higher, so they must have just tighten the bolt instead of taking the bolt off, and adjusting the bumper collar by using a 14MM allen wrench.
Now I'm pissed. So I had to remove the grills off the bumper while the bumper is sitting on the car. You can imagine, there's about 30 clips, and some of them lay behind the exhaust and about 6-7 of them lay behind the bumper cover in an area where I couldn't even get a finger through. So I just ended up breaking about half the clips just to get the grill off to repaint. And since I couldn't take the bumper off to install the new clips, I ended up removing the wheel well cover and installing the clips while the bumper is on the car. Big mistake. The clips are designed to work when the bumper is riding properly at factory heights. I got one side in but the other side keep sliding off because it wasn't fitting properly. Ended up ripping a bolt off on the wheel well trying to get it off too.
Installing the painted grill back was a pain and a half since some of part of the grill is in an area behind the fuel tank and there simply isn't room to manuever. Of course, if I could have taken the rear bumper off this would all be a piece of cake.
I'm probably going to buy a new breaker bar with a swivel head just to remove the bumper and do this properly, but MAN the people at the bodyshop are just plain idiots. Should have just let them paint the bumper and I'll install it myself. UUGH!
