Replacing rear bumper trim panel - anyone had to?

[5280tunage]

Hi All,

So luckily yesterday while at a customer's site, someone politely hit my rear bumper in a parking lot, and left without a note or anything. While most folks might ignore the remaining damage, i'm quite **** and it really bugs me, so I'm considering repairing what I can. Sadly I didn't notice the damage until I was at a Sam's club replacing my factory battery, but essentially the bumper skin on the passenger side was popped off completely and there was scuffing and some paint removal on the rear. The bumper paint removal was pretty high up, close to the tailgate entry guard, and on the gray trim piece that surrounds the hitch opening.

So here's a couple questions, the trim piece looks to be Ford part number JL1Z17K835GPTM, but as is always, you only get stock photos from the catalogs. From the pictures I look at on Google photos, it looks as though almost every rig has the exact same color for this part, even XLT's, Limited's, Plati's, etc. Has anyone replaced this part by chance? What I don't want to do is then have to go get it painted, so that's what I'm trying to figure out. It will be hard to tell from the photo but the gray paint on this part was rubbed off and it's showing the black ABS in a couple spots.

Additionally, if you look at the attached pictures, I circled the piece I'm talking about. additionally, I included another picture of something that really baffled me. Apparently, some of the damage to the bumper skin (deformation a little) as actually caused when the car hit me, but was only caused by the fact that I had a small sandbox worth of rocks stuck between the bumper cover and the rear impact cross bar. Anyone else noticed this? I put a red arrow point to where I noticed it, but there were literally pebbles stuck between the seam of the trim piece and the bumper skin. I sat there for about 10 minutes banging on the bumper skin and you can see the results. Look at the garage floor mat, there are pebbles large and small that just came tumbling out. No wonder these things rattle a lot, some of these parts fit together so loosely. Some of you should go give it a try and see what comes out. its not like I take this thing out 4Wheeling all the time, WTH. if it wasn't for the rocks in there, I think it actually would have had less damage.

Thanks!

 

[sjwhiteley]

I have removed that panel a couple of times but not replaced it. Yes, gravel and dirt seems to get up inside/behind. It's not too difficult to remove. I'm going to wrap mine in some satin dark grey.

 

[Deadman]

Sams battery?

 

[ManUpOrShutUp]

Sams battery?

It can't be any worse than the Motorcraft batteries, can it? JC set the bar pretty low on those.

 

[5280tunage]

They are Duracell. I did a bit of research and for the price, it has 3/4 the warranty of the Bosch, it was available, and frankly I couldn't find much else right now. Most of the car shops around me only seem to have generic batteries anyways. Bosch isn't available anywhere near me. It wasn't my first choice but frankly, I used to be a huge fan of Optima but those are mostly junk, my last one failed in a year. Duracell car batteries are made by the Philip Mallory group which have been making batteries for like 70 years so I figured there's something decent there. We'll see how it goes.

 

[MxRacer965]

Take a closer look, not all have the same color for that area of the bumper cover. I honestly have a hard time making out the damage on the picture. I'd just take it to a body shop and get it taken care of. Can't be much. I had someone hit that hitch cover portion back just after I got mine...then a few months later I hit a deer. The body shop re-painted that cover for me as part of the other $15K they were doing anyway so it didn't cost me anything.

 

[ChuckEQY]

Maybe that part was actually replaced.

 

[duneslider]

I have bought just the hitch cover part. At that time, there was only one color available.

I am having a hard time seeing damage on yours but since replacing my cover, I have scratched up that area quite a bit and almost all the expeditions I see have some damage on that silver plastic area. I stopped worrying about it and I also stopped putting the plastic cover back on...

That is interesting that Sams sells Duracell and then walmart stores sell the everstart. I have actually used the everstart from walmart quite a bit with good results. I usually buy the agm version. I still run an optima in my jeep and get at least 5 years out of them, which is all I was getting out of diehard platinums previously. Everyone talks about how junk batteries are but I seem to be getting about the same life as I always have. I have used the Deka AGM's also and they seem the same.

Was the Duracell an AGM to match what was in the expedition? I drive dirt roads and go offroad even in the expedition a lot and AGMs for sure seem to hold up better.

 

[VBreithaupt]

That bottom corner section is the painted the truck color on platinum editions. It seemed pretty time consuming to remove that section sjwhiteley? I recently replace my hitch cover that I forgot to snap in good or it was stolen? The dealer can order them in primer gray ( which I found everywhere else online) or the correct silver gray color. If you have them order them in the painted its about $20 more.