The Mitsubishi Pajero Owners Club®

[Steve_C]

My tame mechanic has spent well over an hour attempting to remove the towbar arm that bolts to the chassis, but with very little success.  I wanted it off so I could clean it up properly and get it galvanised and get a decent coat of paint on it, but that's looking unlikely.  If I remove the rear bumper, will that give me access to the whole arm so I can get a wire brush on it?  How do I remove the bumper?

[Google]

[Simon_W]

See below. I am pretty sure there's no need to separate the step from the bumper prior to removal, but not had to remove either myself.



Surprised that your mechanic couldn't remove the tow bar. Couldn't the bolts have been ground off if necessary?

[Steve_C]

Thanks Simon.

I'm pretty sure that one of the bolts on each side goes into a thread in the box section chassis rail and the other two appear to have non-captive nuts on them.  The difficulty is getting in to stop the nut spinning, but all of the threads seem to be pretty much seized.  He managed to get the two bolts out that hold the towing eye on, but I've been spraying those with plusgas for a couple of weeks and they were still seized.  The thread on one of the bolts was pretty rounded off in places.  The trouble with grinding the heads off the three bolts on each side of the arm is that I then won't have anything to get hold of to get them out.  If I can get the bumper off, I'll have a better idea of what I'm up against.  It'll have to be a bit at a time though, as my back won't cope with a prolonged session.

One of the bolts that holds the two sections of the sump guard together is also spinning - in it's captive nut.  there may just be enough room to get the edge of a grinding disc between the two plates to cut the bolt off and then try to extract the remaining threaded section through the top of the captive nut.  I may try drilling the nuts out a bit and fitting a helicoil in each.

[Simon_W]

If you have to drill bolts out, I've found that lots of cutting oil really helps. Start with a very small drill and work up gradually.  

I was doing this today on my other vehicle, and I just managed to get my multitool onto the bolt.  Impossible to get a hacksaw in there.  I recent bought myself a set of Irwin Bolt Grip nut removers - really useful tools when working on older vehicles.  

I don't think you'll have enough metal thickness for a helicoil to hold the sump guard in place. Much easier to tack-weld a nut in place (or ask somebody else to). Or use a Rivnut, which can be put in place without a special tool. Just insert a bolt with a nut on the thread. Hold the bolt head and back the nut down onto the Rivnut when it's in place.

[Steve_C]

It looks like the step does need to be removed before the bumper will come off - I removed all of the accessible bolts (the two on the underside sheared off after 1/4 turn), but the bumper was still firmly in place.  I can see the clips that hold the step in position from underneath, but couldn't budge them.  I suspect that they aren't all accessible.  I also tried to remove the reflector unit from the bumper to gain access that way, but the screws are rusted solid.

[Simon_W]

Made any progress?

I think you're right about the step needing to be removed first - and that explains the 'removal steps'.  Looking again, it appears that there are bolts hidden by the step.

[Steve_C]

No progress.  I can't get at the clips that hold the step in a way that would enable me to unclip them.  Part of the problem is that I can't spend any length of time under the car fiddling with it as my back won't take it.  I may take it to a body shop and see what they'll charge to get it off - they should have plenty of experience of removing things without causing additional damage.  I imagine it's an hour's work if you know what you're doing.

[Steve_C]

Finally got it off today.  I got the body shop up the road from me to remove the towbar, which was where all this started.  The towbar looks pretty bad, but I'll see if it will clean up.

Arguably, I didn't need to remove the bumper, but this might be the only opportunity I have, and it does give slightly better access to the chassis rails to clean them up before the towbar goes back on.  I also wanted better access to try to remove what's left of the screws that sheared off on my first attempt.

With the towbar off, the plastic clips that hold the step in place are much more accessible, apart from the ones above the lights in the rear bumper.  After a considerable amount of swearing and inventive use of tools, I finally managed to get them all out.  With the step out of the way, there are 8 M6 screws which hold the metal section behind the bumper to the body / chassis.  These were all fairly rusty on mine, but I managed to ease them out without any shearing off.  There are also a number of black plastic clips that hold the bumper to the metal section (and possibly the chassis, can't remember).

In theory, the bumper "assembly", i.e. bumper and metal section will come off all in one - I didn't realise this, and spent a good hour undoing (and shearing off) the M6 bolts at the bottom of the bumper.  The bumper has "tags" that fit over the metal section which has captive nuts in it.  Some of the bolts came out, three sheared off.  Curses.  Not enough to get hold of with mole grips, and I'm not sure they'll drill out.  Even if they do, the chance of saving the thread in the captive nut is pretty remote.

Besides the screws that are visible on the top edge of the bumper, there are two secret ones - they're behind the rubber covers which are under the side floor sections in the boot.  You need a longish extension on the socket to get to it. Not looking forward to refitting those as it's impossible to see what you're doing.

Remove the bulb holders from the lights in the bumper, and it all comes off.

I've managed to remove the two screws that secure the bumper from the underside (one each side) which sheared off on my first attempt.  Fortunately, there's about 8-10mm of thread protruding through the captive nut, so with plenty of plusgas and some mole grips and a lot more swearing, I managed to gradually wind the remainder of the screw through the top of the captive nut.  The one on the offside was worst as the exhaust is mostly in the way, so the most you can do is just under 1/4 turn at a time.  Just removing these two took about an hour each.

Before I reassemble everything, I'll run a tap through the captive nuts to clear the rust out.  I'll also put some grease on the threads to try to slow the return of the rust.  I've got some Molybdenum grease or some standard heavy grease, but I'm not sure if either of these will go hard over time.  Now that I know what I'm doing, and given that I'll replace all of the screws with stainless ones (including the ones for the lights), I could probably do the job in a couple of hours if the towbar was already removed.

My back will be killing me for the whole week.

[Steve_C]

All back together! Put three coats of polish on the bumper before it went back on with all new fixings.  Even the ones on the inside of the inner wing went back on without too much aggravation, just very careful probing until I found the hole (oo-er!).

[Steve_C]

Hopefully this might help someone else;

Yellow arrows = holes for clips which secure the plastic "step" to the top of the bumper assembly.  These have to be unclipped from underneath.  The step has to be removed before you can get at the remainder of the fixings
Blue arrows = holes for plastic expanding clips which secure the top of the plastic bumper section to the reinforcement section in the image.  To remove the bumper assembly, these should be left in position to hold the two parts together at the top.  There are a number of bolts underneath at the bottom of the bumper which secure the two sections together at the bottom.
Red arrows = M6 captive nuts which hold the reinforcement section to the rear of the car.



There are various other bolts / screws as well, but they're pretty much all visible either from the top or underneath except for the ones accessed via the blanking plugs under the corner floor sections.

[Simon_W]

Thanks! That could be very useful to me one day.