Tailgate cover removal.

I went to go put on my rear plastic liscense plate/trunk lid jobber after the bodywork, and it was kinda messed up and more ugly than I remembered so I decided to get rid of it.

At first I drove around for about a week with the plate wired onto the bumper redneck style, and I picked up a "universal tag holder" from the parts store for $3. It is made of aluminum and comes with two bolts/nuts and two screws with plastic jobbers that hold the liscense plate to the bracket

I guess I'll tell you how to actually remove it. First, remove the rubber strip that goes along the top of it, it simply pulls out from between the body and the plastic piece. You also need to remove the liscense plate, comes off with four nuts, or however many you have left on there. Then you have to remove the two fastners on the bottom edge, and the ones along the top side. The top ones should pull out, this may be difficult to do without breaking them. The lower ones pull out too. (From what I recall, it's been a while since I removed one. correct me if I'm wrong here) Then you have to undo the double-sided tape, this holds each side of the plastic piece to the trunk. It's quite strong, remove carefully.

The install was very simple, and took about 15 minutes. I put the bracket where I liked it and marked and drilled the two holes that hold it in (using my roomates cordless screwdriver actually) and then I had to drill two extra holes because the screws that hold the plate to the bracket extend beyond the bracket (and into the trunk surface) so I drilled two holes to allow the screws to extend into them, allowing the bracket to mount flush against the tailgate.

Since I had four holes drilled in the metal and didn't want them to rust and sofourth, I used four spots of my truck cap mounting tape to seal the bracket and screws to the holes.

Now, when you do this the lower edge of the plate hangs lower than the recessed area of the trunk lid and with the bracket, it mounts slightly at an angle and the plate rests against the bit of the tailgate that bumps out in the back. To prevent noise and damage to the paint I used a strip of the truck cap mounting tape stuck to the plate to act as a rubber cushion type deal. I'll have pictures later...

On the negative side, you might have some rust under there, and also you need to drill holes, which is allright. Oh, and you don't have that little lifting handle for the trunk anymore, so you gotta grab it from the lower edge for a really good hold, though you can still grab it where you used to with no real problem. Also, the plate lights stand out a little more.

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