Exterior

Front Bumper Cover Removal

Front Bumper Cover Removal

There are a whole bunch of nuts inside the fender wells. I found I had to remove both headlight assemblies. There are also screws along the chin. The last connection is the screws on the trim piece under the front of the hood. The toughest part is the ones in the wheel wells but with a 1/4" drive and a wobbly extension it is pretty straight forward. The manuals are pitiful on that subject. The round caps are sucker holes they got nuttin to do with the bumper cover. They are for the tow hooks. All front fog, turn and driving lights stay in place although it is good to remove the trim.

Jay.



I might add a couple of things. The headlights are best removed by only the buckets and not the plates underneath. Doing this is simple - just remove the screws on the plastic cover and then unscrew the headlight bucket from the fork. Then the head light can be unplugged. It is a good time to check the spring release that holds the base. They can break with age and abuse.

I find that a long quarter inch extension with an 8 MM deep socket does the trick. This way you can avoid the wobble extension and get a lot of leverage on the nuts. With a deep socket the bolt that extends through the bumper cover is allowed for without having to loosen it first.

Dan B.



I want to thank everyone who was kind enough to provide comments to help in the removal of my front
bumper cover (MY 83 but should apply to 78 - 86). Very quickly I learned just how badly the shop manual procedure is lacking. However, the general consensus was to remove the headlamps to get to all of the screws.

I was able to do it without removing the headlamps. By jacking up the car, flipping up the headlamps, removing the chin spoiler, Parking lamp trim, front wheels, brake cooling ducts and the front wheel well walls, I was able to get to 10 of the 12 8mm nuts that hold the cover to the front fenders with 1/4" socket wrench and extention(s) and the last two with an 8mm box wrench fairly easily. The four hardest nuts to remove are directly in front of the headlamps actuating bar (two on each side). The two nuts on each side innermost to the engine compartment wall were reached with close to a 1' long socket drive consisting of an 8mm socket, two 1/4" drive extentions (3" and 6"), and the 1/4" drive socket wrench itself. The next nut to the outboard side on each side were removed with alot of patience and a box wrench. There is no clearance for a socket wrench. When I put the cover back on I will use an offset wratchet box wrench to speed it up. Then its just a coupple of bolts on the bottom of the cover and the screws under the lip of the hood, and the cover pulls right off with parking lamps in place. Make sure you only pull it off slightly as the headlamp washer jets need to be disconnected (yup I found out the hard way). I was lucky that the cover is still in excellent shape considering the blow given it by the PO that cracked the paint up.

Hope that helps for those that were also interested and asked me to pass what I found along.

Thanks,
John Eifert
83S AT US Shieferblau/blue
83S AT US Zinnmetallic/Burgundy

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