One of the things I like about living in Indiana is that a front license plate isn’t required. Now, don’t get me wrong — I don’t mind when the front license plate area is actually part of the bumper, like it is on Diamond and Olivia, not something just tacked onto the front. But Serenity’s was just that; a dealership in Serenity’s past life (she was previously in Virginia and Ohio after all) drilled half-inch holes in her front bumper to mount a license plate holder. With no front plate and me liking how the car looks without the holder, there’s just no need for it. And after almost three years of owning Serenity, I decided it was finally time to take the dang thing off.
The problem with this plate holder was that I couldn’t just take a 10-mm socket and ratchet the bolts out. Instead, it had rubber grommet things on the back of the bumper that would just spin with the bolt, and they were inaccessible from the bottom and top. So, this process was more complicated than it should’ve been — I had to remove the front bumper.
Removing the Front Bumper
To start, I drove Serenity up onto the ramps so that I could get better access to the bolts on the bottom of the bumper, chocked her rear wheels, and popped open the hood. Next, I removed the three trim retainers in the front of the wheel wells on each side, as well as the side marker lights as there is a retainer behind it, as well. The side marker light popped out after pushing in a little metal clip with a flat-head screwdriver; then, rotate the light to pop the bulb out.
Once all of those were out, I moved to the bottom of the bumper. There are two 10-mm bolts down there, plus what is supposed to be seven of the trim retainers, but somehow Serenity only had three. Up at the top of the front bumper are five 10-mm bolts and two trim retainers. After all were out, I just popped the bumper off. The connectors to the fog lights were still connected, so I just pushed down on the tab on the connectors and slid the pieces apart, though that took a little bit since it didn’t want to come apart while I was trying to prop up the bumper at the same time.
Removing the Front License Plate Holder
After the bumper was off, it was time to get the plate holder off. The rubber grommet things proved to be a little challenging, but in hindsight, they really shouldn’t have been. I tried needle nose pliers to hold it in place while trying to ratchet the bolt off. That didn’t work, of course.
I then remembered: Vice grips are a thing. So, I dug them out of the toolbox and snapped them onto the grommet, and wouldn’t you know, they worked. The license plate holder fell off, I popped the grommets out of the holes (those needle nose pliers finally became useful here), put the front bumper back on, and all was right in the world.
Filling the Holes
Well, almost everything was right in the world. Removing the license plate holder left behind two half-inch holes in the bumper. This required a trip to my local Ace Hardware to grab some bumper plugs — which, oddly, the half-inch plugs wouldn’t fit, but 7/16-inch ones did (for anyone who is wondering, they’re called “nylon hole plugs”). I popped them into the holes, and wa-la. Now, all was right in the world.