Well good luck with doing this to your T-Bird/Cougar. as you can see there is a very light scratch underneath from the holder. Whoa, not cleaning behind there for 16 years is a little scary at first!!Ĭlean 'er up. I could only get 3 of the 4 to drop out, oh well.

Here is what those rivet backs look like. This step is optional, I just used a small awl to push the remaining plastic bit out, you could easily use a small screwdriver, just be careful not to damage the bumper paint. So the next step for me was to push the back side of the rivets into the bumper cover, and shake the cover so the back parts of the rivets fall down to the ground. So as you can see from that last picture, if you use a large drill bit even if you go a little too deep you still won't hurt the bumper, you'll start to hurt the actual plastic plate holder. When you're done carefully drilling, you should see this, note the drill bit did not touch the bumper at all, the plastic front part of the rivet falls off at this point: Just be careful, you're only trying to drill the rivet out, not actually drill through and hit the bumper. So very slowly, drill out the four plastic rivets using a larger drill bit (at least 1/4'), the bigger the better up to 3/8'. Use common sense, it's tempting to use your fingers but don't LOL. If the rivets turn while you're drilling, you may need to use some needlenose pliers or something else to kind of hold the outer edge of the rivet from turning with the bit.

Simply take a larger drillbit on a drill and slowly drill the center of the rivets. Basically you need to remove the plate itself, which will expose four plastic rivets which are what hold the holder onto the bumper cover. It's pretty straightforward as you can see from the following photos.

Ford edge front license plate bracket