Going to be replacing my front bumper with a freshly-painted non-cracked one. Any tricks to doing this? Do the headlights or grill or anything else have to be removed?

The back bumper needs painting, too. So I will be removing it as well. Again, what needs to go first to get the thing off?

Both look fairly straight forward in the FSM, but I figure I would ask since I've never messed with them before.

 

Jack the car up, remove the front wheels, pull the splash guards back to access the nuts that hold the bumper cover to the fenders, remove the bolts that secure the bumper to the chassis and pull it out. I've never removed the rear bumper, but it's probably close to the same. No need to remove the head/corner lights.

 

I hate the MAxima Bumpers becasue of this...there is a row of bolts on the top and bottom of the bumper...it's a ton of bolts...I was surprised when I took my bumpers off because I saw one bolt then another then another...it sucked...but yea...you should lift the car to take it off...

 

I just did this over the last week. Someone hooked the front bumper cover and yanked it clean off, tearing all the mounting holes and breaking the end flanges completely off. So I went to the local Pull-A-Part and got another one.

To get at the top bolts, I had to remove the grill and the headlights, for the bottom ones, I had to remove some plastic that was in the way of the bottom bolts. For the ones hooked to the fenders, you move the fender well plastic out the way by taking the front 2 screws out that attach the plastic to the inside of the fender wheel well. Then I had a couple of push connectors that had to remove (i.e. destroy) from the front of the wheel well plastic (but in front of the wheel well), then unhool the fender brace from the front bottom of each fender, then you pull all that plastic out of the way enough to get you hands in to the 4 nuts on the inside of the fender that hold the ends of the bumper cover. I also removed the splash guards under the front just to have more room.