Rear Fender Bumper

Unscrew the phillips heads bolt at the top rear of each rear wheel arch. It has already been removed in this image and goes into the white plastic clip.

Attachment 10417

Detach the strap which supports the lower edge of the outer fender on each side. The bolt at the fender is prone to break, so take out the one at the frame if the other seems stuck.

Attachment 10418

Locate the two towing hoop brackets under the back end. There are three 10mm bolts holding each bracket. Remove these. They are likely rusted solid. Use an Impact Wrench!! You do not want to break the bolts or the welded nuts inside the inner fender component!!

Attachment 10419

One of the welded nuts sheared and I had to grind it off. PITA.

Attachment 10420

The fender is now completely loose except for one annoying push/pop clip on each side of the outer fender. You have to reef straight out on each side of the van about a foot behind the wheel arch. Again, PITA. Below is what the clips look like when you've got them unpopped. Now the whole fender just slides out backwards.

Attachment 10421

If it's anything like mine you've got a real rusty mess on your hands.

Attachment 10422

The outer fender is attached to the inner with a bunch of bolts along the top and bottom edges. Every one of these was rusted solid and either broke or pulled the plastic tabs off and started spinning. I had to grind the heads off all the bolts that did this. This will almost certainly result in melting the tabs which the bolts are mounted to, but since the tabs are broken it doesn't really matter.

Attachment 10423

At least now you have everything apart.

Attachment 10424

After I had it apart I began hammering on the inner fender and holes started appearing all over as rust fell off it!
I am posting this so that it might encourage others to get in there and do a bit of maintenance and re-painting before it gets as bad as mine.
When I figure out what I'm doing with my lump of iron oxide I'll do another post.

A previa just appeared at the junk yard, but could I get the fender mount/tow brackets off with hand tools? Noooo. So I scraped most of the rust off my very rotten one, painted it, attached a few brackets to function as replacement mounting tabs for the plastic ones which broke off, and screwed it all back together. I thought wood blocks were a good idea for the make-shift mounts because they will slowly rot away like the rest of the bodywork.

Attachment 10449

Attachment 10450

Attachment 10451

Attachment 10452

Don't let yours get this bad.

FWIW, my bumper almost fell off in '15; the brackets had maybe 25% of the metal on them that yours did - just enough metal to keep them in close proximity to the rear of the van; I literally yanked the bumper off with bare hands. I found a replacement (bumper reinforcement plus the brackets) from a San Antonio salvage yard for $100, shipped to CT for $66 via Greyhound Express, which is the way to go for large/bulky stuff that would bankrupt you via UPS or USPS. It wasn't in quite perfect shape in terms of, well, shape, but solid and totally rust-free. Prior to that I did make a trip with "brackets" MacGyvered out of hard-rock maple...