trying to take my rear bumper off and the bolts along the sides are giving me trouble. i gutted the hatch and this let me get to the passenger side bolts. but the driver side is in between layers of the car that dosent look to be disassemblable. Can it be done? If so how. or should i just try to make there repairs to the bumper while its on the car.
please help

 

take the tail lights off there are bolts under there. once those are removed it should come off.

 

Not quite.

Once youve removed the tail lights (all three sections), there are torx nuts to remove from the top that hold the bumper skin to the chassis. Remove those.

Then, remove all of your hatch plastics as you will need to reach your hand down the hole that exposes the inside of the rear fender on both sides of the car. Its the same adjacent space that houses the antenna on the drivers side. The passenger side will have your ABS computer in the way, you may need to move that.

Youre looking for 2 10mm bolts on the top of that side of the bumper and on the bottom. If you feel in there, there will be a rectangular plastic peice between the two bolts. That is a plastic clip that holds the bumper to the chassis. It isnt easy, but its pretty simple. Youll be removing each of the two bolts blind, so feel around. You can guage reference to where they are by looking on the outside of the bumper skin and see where the body line meets to the chassis. There is one stud up top and one below.

Finally, I think its a 12 mm nut that holds on the bumper and the plastic undercowl that is found from the underside of the car. Get under the car and trace the bumper skin to the body line down and you will see one nut sandwiching the cowl and the bumper to the chassis. Remove this.

Watch for electrical lines to the rear backup lights.

Good luck.

 

maybe ill just try to leave it on.

 

CrazyAZN is right. There are metel reinforcement brackets on either end of the bumper, with three studs that go through to the lower quarter panel. The bottom stud has a nut that is accessed from under the car. The top two nuts aren't like regular nuts, they are ~3/4" tall. You have to remove those nuts by removing the rear trim pieces and reaching inside the quarter panel. IIRC you also have to unbolt the ABS computer to reach the driver/left side nuts.

You also have to remove the rear parking light assemblies and the license plate light and disconnect them from the harness, otherwise your bumper cover will be hanging by these wires after you unbolt it.

This is all diagrammed in the Body manual, page S-18. Download it and refer to it - often.

 

As the outhers say, And you have to pull hard to get it of as there are plastic location pegs

 

The pegs take quite a bit of force to dislodge. I used a plastic coated handle as a wedge close to the clips. There is one more bolt above my thumb in this picture, for a totoal of three per side.