Roadmaster Base Plate Installation - 2007 Chevrolet Malibu
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How to Install Roadmaster Base Plates on a 2007 Chevrolet Malibu
Today on this 2007 Chevrolet Malibu we are going to install part number 523120-1 from Roadmaster, the EZ Base Plate Kit. The first thing we need to do is open up the hood and get some fasteners so we can take off the front bumper cover. There will be some fasteners on the top and the bottom. With the rivets we just have to unscrew the top part of them and we will pop up the bottom half. When it does not unscrew very easily, pull up on the plastic a little to bind it up and that might help back out the screw. Now we are underneath the vehicle starting over on the driver side. We are going to take out these 7 millimeter fasteners and work our way all the way around the edge of the bumper. There is also four plastic rivets we need to remove along the way too. Lets remove this plastic part here with these two rivets and then we will go back to the original rivets we were going to take out before. Now that you can see the plastic rivets remove these four too. Next we are going to remove these two little panels right here, these little rivets and that will give us a more room to take off the bumper cover easier. 01:38
Back up behind the grill we have got two fasteners we need to remove and this goes into the bumper core. That should do it for underneath the car. Now lets go to the inside of the fender wells and remove those fasteners. Now you need to remove the rivets on the inside of the fender well, these plastic ones. There should be four of them here. We can fold this out of the way and there is a screw that we need to remove from here too. Now we will repeat the same process back over on the passenger side. Once we have all of our fasteners removed we can pull off the bumper. All we have to do is get from the fender well and gently pull it out and it will unsnap. Next we are going to take off these radiator side panels right here. A variety of rivets, one here, here, and there are two on the bottom also. There is one more fastener back here that we will let sit back and be out of our way. We will repeat the same process on the other side. On the passenger side we have got this part that is sitting on top of shield so we are going to remove it, it has a plastic rivet here. Then we will pull them down. 03:07
The next thing we are going to do is install some metal pieces and brackets that will help stiffen up the bumper. To do that we are going to center punch and drill two holes on the backside of the bumper structure. Then we will drill out our holes. We will be drilling those out to 17/ 32. We will start off with a pilot hole and then work our way up. We are done with the driver side. Now lets do the passenger side. Through the holes we just drilled on the backside we are going to install this 4 inch bolt and flat washer. Then we are going to install this tube spacer. Do the same thing on the top. Then this bracket will go on the outside. What we will do is use this round hole on top and we will put the slotted hole at the bottom. We will put a lock washer and nut on top of that. The bottom bolt is going to get a flat washer, lock washer, and nut. With these, we can torque these bolts down as specified since they just strengthen the bumper up. Now we can install the U-bolts that come with the kit. They slip over the bumper like this. It is tight so you will have to loosen up the cable but set them in like that. It is not going to be sitting like this, it is going to be sitting at an angle. Next we will install some hardware inside the frame on the front of the vehicle and underneath is a square hole that we need to install a plate and a carriage bolt. We are going to put the plate and carriage bolt in the same spot and pull it back through. To help us do that we are going to use a wire pull part number 80101-1. Next we can start hanging up the frame pieces. The curve goes to the outside of the vehicle and the receiver part goes to the front. Line up the bolt we just installed. With the bracket on there we are going to leave it loose and you are going to want this part of the bracket sitting on the outside of the frame. Now we will work on the U-bolt part and the U-bolt will use a flat washer, lock washer, and nut. Make sure it is as tight as you can get it. Snug down all of the bolts. We have got the driver side done, lets go to the passenger side and repeat the same process. We have got our bracket in place and we have it finger tight. Make sure it is against the steel. Punch a mark in the center and then drill out with a 1/ 4 inch bit and then 17/ 32. 05:58
Next we will install the bolt and on the back side we are going to install a lock washer and a nut. Now you can start tightening down the frame bracket because we are going to start off with these bolts so you can pull it tight against the frame. Then we will tighten everything else up. When you tighten down the U-bolts you want to do it evenly on both sides and then torque them down. Push the plastic shield back up into place, this splash shield, however the bracket is going to be in the way so we are going to cut out to make room for it. We are going to start above this edge and we are going to make a straight line all the way across so we have room for the cross bar and then on our way back up. It will be a good idea to have an extra set of hands to help steady it while you are cutting. We are going to use the rotary tool to do that. Push it back up into position and if we need to do anymore trimming we can do that now. It looks like we are pretty good though. Next we need to work on the foam reinforcement behind the bumper. We are going to take this out, set it up to the bumper, and make our marks so we can cut out around the U-bolts and stiffener brackets in the bumper core. There are only three fasteners here, here, and here that we need to take out. Use a square bit. If you do not have one of those you can use a flat head screwdriver. I am using a 1/ 8 inch bit, get it started into the foam and then you can unscrew it with your fingers. Now lets hold it up and center it up. Try to line it with some existing points where it was pushed up against before. Take a marker and make a general mark. You can see the marks on the bottom, follow them straight up and continue that on all of the remaining points of contact. We have made our cutouts now. We are going to use the rotary tool and we are going to cut in the foam and pry out the chunks. In this one we are going to have to cut thorough the plastic so it is going to be tricky but it is the same procedure. We will put our fastener back in place at the top. The other two fasteners we had to cut out the holes for so they are not going to get reused so we will leave that alone for now. 09:02
Next we will put our bumper cover up temporarily and then we will see what we need to cut out for the base plates themselves. You can see where the receivers come out in the grill so we are going to have to cut out that section. What we will do is cut out these two bars going across so it will be nice and even that way. So we will make some marks and do that on both sides of the vehicle and we will get to cutting. After a couple of test fits we are pretty secure on how this is going to fit and look so we are okay with that. However we still have got these tabs in the way that are holding the foam core in place still. We can simply cut these off and leave them alone but we tried it and what we did is we can fold this up into itself. Take a screwdriver, plow out a hole into it, and reuse one of the existing fasteners. Take the auger plastic bit with the Robertson head on it and we can thread it back into place. That way everything gets held nice and tight and we have plenty of room for everything. With the bumper cover on lets do one more attachment and this is the attachment for the safety cable. We are going to attach a lock washer and nut underneath that and torque those down also. With any luck we will see parts through the bumper cover and then we will slip our bumper cover into place. We will permanently reattach the splash guard on the bottom. We are done with that side so we will go over on the other side and repeat the same process. Lets slip our bumper cover back in to place for good now. You can see where our tabs come through the grill and we have plenty of room for the receiver bar. All we have got to do now is reassemble the bumper cover and reattach the other plastic components. One of our last details is our safety chain hook up. Clip the D-ring onto the safety chain and the D-ring on to our tab. We have got one on each side. We will install the brackets. The best way to do it is with it pointing down, push it in, and twist it and it locks into place. With that, everything is secured, our bumper cover is back in place, we are ready to go. There you have it for part number 523120-1 from Roadmaster.
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Video Edited:
Zack K
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