Front Fascia (bumper cover) Removal for a 1G (1995-2000) Stratus, Cirrus, or Breeze
· a small/medium flat head screw driver
· a small/medium phillips head screw driver
· a pliers (non needle-nose)
· a 3/8" socket
· a 3/8" standard wrench
· a Vise-Grips
· a rag to protect the paint when prying
· a flashlight (might be helpful when trying to unbolt the final two bolts and splash sheild clips)
· some zip-lock baggies to keep the fasteners all together
So, for some reason want to take off your front bumper cover. The first step is to open your hood. Below is about what things will look like once you've got the hood proped open. Start by removing ONLY THE CENTER PIN of the push-in fasteners, circled in red, holding the top of the fascia to the radiator closure panel crossmember. Later on you'll pull out the rest of the clip but for now it helps hold the cover on while you remove the other clips. To remove ONLY THE CENTER PIN, take a flat head screwdriver and pry it out.
Next, move to the driver's side front wheel. Turn the wheels so that you have better access to the inner wheel well. Look at the back and top of the splash sheild for three twist-style retaining clips. The clips are, again, circled in red.
You can just grab those and twist them either way while pulling them away from the sheild. After you have the three clips out, manuever the sheild over the wheel and set it aside.
Driver's side splash shield fasteners:
Now go to the passenger side. The clips for this side aren't as easy because this sheild wasn't designed to be as easy to remove because there isn't anything behind it that would need to be accessed like there is with the battery on the drivers side. I had to use a pliers to get them out and it really tore them up because the plastic wasn't that thick and lets face it, the youngest first gen cloud rolling around is 6-7 years old, the rest are even older. This plastic has seen better days.
Passenger's side splash sheild fasteners:
If you feel it necessary to replace these it shouldn't be too tough to get some new ones from a local auto parts store.
These are the spots where you can find the three fasteners holding the sheild in place.
Passenger's side splash shield fastener locations:
Top fastener location:
Now, I didn't pull this sheild out of the wheel well, I just kinda pulled it down and to the side. All you need to move this for is to get to the screws holding the cover to the bottom of the fenders rearward of the parking lamp.
Go to the front of your Cloud and sit down so you're looking right at the crosshair grill. If you look right below the farthest protruding part of the cover just to the right and left of the center line should be two more screw type clips.
Radiator fascia fasteners:
These should come out pretty easy with a phillips head screwdriver, but if they're giving you a hard time use a flat head screwdriver to pry the head of the plastic screw up while backing it out with the phillips head.
Stay at the front of the car and get on your back with your head under the bumper. You're going to see 7 push in clips holding the very bottom of the cover to the car. These twist out with a phillips head screwdriver but alot of mine wouldn't come out because they seemed to just spin in place when trying to back them out and it didn't take much before the heads stripped out. So I got a small screw, about the size of the stripped area, and screwed it in a little ways and then took a vise grips to pull and twist it out. Just don't twist the screw in too far because it'll split the plastic screw in two.
Lower fasteners (x7) and locations:
One of the last things you have to do to fully remove the cover is to remove the screws mentioned earlier just behind the parking lamp. These two screws screw up from the bottom. Use the 3/8" socket or wrench to loosen them and just be careful not to drop them.
Here are the locations of the two screws:
Once those two screws are out, go ahead and pop out the 3 partial clips you should have left in from the first step of this whole deal. Slide the cover away from the car towards you and if you have fog lamps, disconnect the harness at this time. If everything went well, your Cloud should now look something like this:
To re-install the cover just repeat the steps in reverse order.
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