Front bumper mount?

My kid smacked a phone box the other day and pushed one side of the bumper back about 2" or so. Now the vertical edge of the bumper scrapes the tire on sharp turns in the one direction. There's no sheetmetal or grille damage of any kind.

I know how to remove the bumper, grille etc and I think a few bumper brackets are replaceable? I'm not expecting to fix the frame myself if it's bent, but if I get lucky and only need to replace a bracket or whatever I'll try that.

Anyone got any advice there? Specifically, are the bumper brackets designed to be somewhat sacrificial/removable?

 

Pictures are cool

 

Friday is my day off, and it's raining today.

Best I can manage outside my window:

 

I'd just buy a bumper someone has taken off, I bet there's no frame damage.

shoukdnt be hard to find depending on where you are

 

Brackets are easy to remove .

If your not real finicky you maybe can get them straight enough.

 

Bit of a stretch but if you have a workshop with a good size vise you could try clamping it & using leverage to un-bend the affected section, then use various sizes of ball-peen and/or rubber mallets, pieces of wood, etc to pop out the major dents.

 

The brackets that hold the bumper on are not near that area and they can easily be manipulated if bent or even broken. If the dent bugs you the only way to get rid of it is to replace with another one really. That metal is hard as hell.

 

Yeah that makes sense. But no, the dent doesn't bother me; this is mostly a "work truck" and even before I bought it would never have won any beauty contests.

Randomly, my little town has another truck that looks identical (even the color) except for the wheels. And of course that one looks cherry LOL.

I just can't have it rubbing the tire like now. I should know more after this weekend.

 

Truck is back together and no tire rubbing. That side's bumper bracket got pushed (rotated) back, but not necessarily bent. I should have compared it to the other side but didn't.

Where the bumper bracket bolts to the frame, those 2 bolt slots have quite a bit of available wiggle room because the holes are much larger than the bolts that go through them. And so, it mostly just rotated back upon impact.

The small, body-colored bracket on the outer-most part of the bumper did get pushed back more, and a little bent. It's not lined up great with the bumper but now that it's back together you don't really notice it.