New Rear Bumper and License Plate Setup

I "needed" a new rear bumper setup.

The old bumper (above) was from a 1993 or so Ford F150. It served it's purpose, but it was not the look I wanted in this iteration of my rebuild. Instead I am going for the original rear bumper. In doing so, I also need brackets and everything else that fits it.

LMC Truck has a nice schematic (shown below). I ordered the license plate screws (#7) and the bumper bolts (#3) shown in the image below. I want to make a quick comment about the LMC bolt kit (#3) below.... It is NICE! Very nice. The bolt heads are a mirror chrome finish and were individually wrapped in paper towel to prevent any damage.

The LMC Truck bumper (above) was out of stock when I wanted it, so instead I went to Dennis Carpenter to get both the bumper and the bumper brackets/bracket bolt set.

 

The first thing that I noted, the LMC Truck diagram (at top of post) shows the brackets backwards. The notches on the brackets should be facing away from each other (see above and below pictures)

I found that there was a trick to getting everything aligned correctly. NO NOT tighten any bolt/nuts until you have every bolt in every hole.

I started with the brackets to frame first. I put each of the four bolts in and put the nuts in place. I only turned the but a couple turns, no more. They will be sloppy at this point, that is good.

Next I aligned the bumper to the brackets. One at a time I put each bolt in each hole and put the nut on, just a turn or two. The last bumper bolt was the toughest. I used a large screw driver through the bolt hole to pull it in place. Once in place I held the bracket, removed the screw driver and jammed the bolt in the hole. Only after every single bolt was in place did I tighten anything. I started with the bumper first, tightened each bolt/nut and then moved on to the brackets to frame bolts.

The bumper is in place and I think it looks great! Next I installed the license plate lights.

There is a notch on the light housing that corresponds to the notch on the bumper. However, that only woks on one side. I hand to grind out the teeth on the passenger side light so that it fit in the notch.

The wiring was simple enough. The male connector on the lights fit right into the female connector that I had installed in the wire harness previously.

I installed the license plate screws and was done. Below is the finished product.