SMA Brush Guard installed on RA bumper

[cinci]

I finally managed to install the SMA Brush Guard last weekend and it was a lot more work than I thought it would be.

The difficulty comes from the fact that the folding forward of the hood has to clear both the mounting brackets and the mounting arms of the brush guard itself. This is complicated by the fact that the new bumper changed all of the clearances and mounting points from the factory bumper.

In the first pictures with the brush guard clamped to the bumper with the stock mounts you can see that the guard is positioned too high and is tilted back too far due to the incline in the mounting surface of the new bumper. The required us to lower the mounting point of the bumper and to try to change the mounting angle.

Our first attempt was with a spacer made from 1"x2" boxed steel bar that was angle cut on the bottom to fit the angle of the bumper. However, this wouldn't clear the hood when it was tilted forward so back to the drawing board.

We finally decided that we would need to mount the stock brackets to the bumper but they would require two cuts. One cut was straight across the bottom as close to the original mounting hole as possible and the second on an angle to match the angle of the bumper, behind and below the mounting hole. This allowed the bracket to be positioned as low as possible to help clear the hood and to lower the position of the brush guard.

The final problem was the hood tilted too far forward and would touch the grill to the mounting bars of the brush guard when folded forward. The required the relocating of the springs on the retaining straps for the hood in an effort to shorten the straps, thus limiting how far forward the hood would tilt and giving us the clearance that we needed.

I like the look of the SMA guard but the installation took about six hours.