How To Install A Nudge Bar For 2004 & Up Subaru Outback.

[Guest blondy]

I bought myself a nudge bar off of eBay, and it came with no instructions on how to install it. It was for my 2005 Subaru outback, but fits outback’s from 2004 and on...until they change the shape again I suppose.

 

I searched and searched the net for a how to guide to install one for a n00b, and couldn't find one, so I decided to go at it by myself and from some little tips from other peoples.

 

Not too bad for an I.T. person if I don't say so myself, and it helps to destroy all of those myths about I.T. guys that don't know how to do anything besides sit behind a computer...hehe

 

SO HERE IT GOES: (Hopefully I’ve made enough sense for you, if not, let me know and I’ll have another shot)

 

First Step is to remove the grill, there are 3 different kinds of clips holding it on.

 

Remove the 4 push pins which are circled in yellow in the image below. Simply use a flat head screw driver to lift the middle pin and then the pin and collar will all lift out in one piece.

 

Then unclip the four clips along the top of the grill which are circled in blue. Simply push down on the clip in the small hole in the grill with the flat head screw driver, or any other small pointed object and pull the grill towards the front to separate the clips and the grill.

 

Lastly if you look down the back of the inside of the grill you will see how the grill connects to the front bumper, which is another form of a clip. The locations of these last 2 clips are indicated by the red circles. Each of the two clips require you to lift one of the fingers and push down the other finger, and then slide the grill forwards to that it slips off of the bumper.

 

 

You should have been able to successfully remove the front grill and be left with the following

 

 

Next step is to remove the pins holding on the bumper, which are the same push pins as the 4 from the grill. There were only a total of 6 on my car, but who's to say there wasn't more when the car was new since they are only plastic. But simply look along the bottom of the bumper and locate them.

 

For mine I found 2 on each side of the bumper, just in front of each tyre as shown in the image below.

 

 

Then on the front part of the inside of each tyre well, you should be able to pop out the edge of the plastic lining to reveal one last plastic push pin as shown below.

 

 

Now’s the part that I got stuck at until I went to visit my panel beater mate, found out I wasn't been ruff enough to do the job.

 

Near the flare of the bumper on the actual top panel above the bumper there are two hooks coming down that the bumper clips on to. You need to pull the bumper off of these two hooks, so that these clips appear on top of the bumper and disconnected from the bottom. You then need to push the bumper in slightly and pull the bumper down far enough to let the raised bit of the bumper clear the top panel, and once it does you can pull the bumper out and it's unclipped.

 

Does that make sense? I hope so, if not let me know and I’ll try to explain it better. All I know is not to be scared to use a bit off muscle, since my mate said the modern cars can surprisingly take it a lot better than the cars of yesteryear. Take a look at the image below, hopefully it will help a little with the above description.

 

 

The bumper should now be free from the car and you should be able to remove it, buy pulling it forward and off of the car. See image below.

 

NOTE: I did this myself, but if I were to do it again and had the extra person around, I would do this with 2 people. If you want to attempt on your own, do as I did and put a thick towel on the ground. This way if the bumper happens to fall off, you don't chip/damage the bumper.

 

On my model outback, the fog lights are attached to the bumper. I found out that I could remove the bumper and sit it in front of the car with the fog lights still attached, do so at your own discretion. I chose to do this, a lot of people like to disconnect them and a lot of people also like to disconnect the battery too. But I found out that I had plenty of room to work with while it was still attached and sitting in front of the car.

 

 

Once the bumper is off, you will expose the impact foam which is behind the bumper, as seen in the image above. Simply remove this foam to expose the next lot of parts to remove off of the car.

 

Next is to remove the main beam that goes across the front of the car. To remove this there is 4 bolts on each side of it, these four bolts are shown in the image below by the yellow dots. You can safely remove all 4 bolts on both ends and the beam will stay there, since there is a small hook in-between the top 2 bolts on each side that hold the bar in place. Once the bolts are all removed, lift the bar up and then out to unhook it and disconnect it from the car.

 

The last thing to remove is the plastic wind deflector right below the beam that you just removed. It is held in place by more push pins, which I have circled in blue in the image below. Mine actually only had 3, but who knows what happened to it since I bought the car second hand.

 

Then there are 2 plastic plugs/pins that I have shown with the red dots in the image below, which need to be popped out. Once these are out, the plastic wind deflector should simply left off.

 

 

Once the above 2 parts have been removed, you will be left with the image below.

 

 

Now to install the main support brackets of the nudge bar. Silly me forgot to actually take a photo of these before I put them on the car, due to the fact that I was excited that I finally got this far and just wanted to get it on...hehe

 

But all that needs to be done, is to line up the plate with the holes from where you removed the main front beam as seen in the image below circled in yellow. The strut that comes out through the front of the bumper once on that the nudge bar attaches too, should be located in the bottom right corner once bolted on the left of the car and the bottom left once bolted on the right of the car when you’re looking at the front of the car.

 

Before you attempt to put the plate on though, you need to bend up the little hooks on each end of the main front beam, otherwise it won't bolt back on. See the second image below, the hook that needs to be bent up is circle in yellow.

 

 

 

Now to do some juggling and put both the brackets and main beam back on the car, once again I did it by myself but it probably would of been easier with a second person. But I couldn't wait and wanted it on now...hehe

 

The bracket has to go on first and then the main beam after it, but all on the same bolt that originally held just the main beam itself. What I did was hook the main beam in place, then lift one side off and slide the nudge bar bracket up the back of it, line up the holes and slide one of the top bolts in. Then I put the other top bolt in, and only did them up loosely but tight enough to hold the bracket and main beam in place.

 

I then repeated the above step on the other side, which should work the same way. So long as you only did the bolts up loosely, since if they are done up tight, you won't be able to pull the beam out far enough to slide the nudge bar bracket up behind the main beam. You can then line up all of the holes and put in the remaining bolts and do up tightly. The next two images below show the brackets and main beam back in place on the car.

 

 

 

The plastic wind deflector can now be installed back on the car, I probably should of tried putting this back on before I put the brackets and main bar on. But by what I could fathern out, I don't think it would fit properly behind the bracket. Since at the very ends of the wind deflector, the big section of plastic isn't very flat and wouldn't allow the nudge bar bracket to finish flush on the car frame. So all I did was bend the plastic sections at the ends to fit accordingly along its original position on the car. It’s up to you if you want to try and see if it fits behind the nudge bar bracket, or cut the plastic so it fits, but I’m happy with the way I did it. See the image below that shows the plastic wind deflector back in its original spot.

 

 

That’s the main brackets to the nudge bar installed, and now you can start to reverse the process and put the bumper back on the car.

 

First put the impact foam back in place as seen in the image below.

 

 

Now put the bumper back in place, once again it would have been easier with a second person. But I found that I put the middle section of the bumper on the car first, it held the bumper in place and I was able to go around to the sides and do the reverse with the clips near the flares and clip the bumper back in place.

 

Then you can clip the push pins back in place, I would advise to do the one inside the wheel arch first and then the ones under the bumper. Then push the inner plastic lining back in place behind the bumper and any other plastic that may have fallen out of place that needs to be pushed back up behind the bumper.

 

The bumper should now be back on and the brackets should be visible through the bottom vent in the bumper as seen in the two images bellow.

 

 

 

Now simply line up the clips on the grill and push it back on to the car, and then put in the last 4 push pins and the grills back in place.

 

The last thing to do is bolt on the nudge bar and line it all up so it's straight and it will look like the image below.

 

 

Close the bonnet and it's all done, you have successfully installed your very own nudge bar.

 

 

 

 

And out of the whole lot of parts that had to be removed and put back on again, I only had the below 2 parts left over.

 

 

But these don't really matter since they were the two pins from the wind deflector, which couldn't be put back in since the nudge bar bracket covered the holes for them.

Edited April 26, 2009 by blondy