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Finally, it’s time to move onto the crash damage. We started with the tailgate panel. The first thing to do is buy a 1-1 ½” putty knife and a razorblade. There is a ton of body tape that has to be sawed through. Once you have those tools, remove the license plate and then carefully pry away this cover panel behind. It is held down with body tape. Prying it off without bending it too badly is an art, so work slowly.
This will reveal these four bolts. Remove these, as well as the four Torx screws on the outside of the tailgate. Inside, remove the 6 hex nuts that run along the bottom of the tailgate. The grab handle will also pop off at this point. You can see the debris from our original license plate screws that had to be carefully drilled out and retapped when we bought the car.
This part will take two people. We started on the passenger side and worked left. Begin scraping off the tape from the old trim panel. When you get to the middle of the panel, you will encounter four plastic poppers (the holes for which can be seen on the very outside of the spare tire bulge). These will require a (strong) screwdiver to pop free. They are stubborn and a real pain in the ass. But once you get through them the rest of the tape should peel off and give you this.
We noticed the license plate light bracket was rusting. We removed it and gave it a sand and paint, just like we did with the cowl earlier. 
Much better. Since this part is such a pain to get to, it’s important to get it taken care of now.
Now to the bumper cover. Removing this is fairly straightforward, but with one major complication. Let's start easy. Five hex bolts reside under the tailgate.
Next, 7 more hex bolts attach the bottom of the bumper cover to the bumper beam. Don't forget the two on the far ends. You can see how beat up our bumper really is. Considering the hood of the other car bent in half, this is a pretty damn stout piece. Now we come the fun part. The last four bolts are on the sides. Unfortunately…
