Montero Sport bumper swap

(My first post and my first write up go easy on me folks)

Well I did it. I swapped a 97-99 Montero Sport front bumper onto my 91 MM and it was nowhere near as easy as I had heard it was.
As I was looking for parts at my local Pick n Pull I noticed there was a fairly clean 98 Montero Sport 2 wheel drive model that was a fairly low trim level variant, so it did not have the fender extension holes that would normally have to be filled on this swap. It also happened to be parked exactly across from the MM I was pulling parts from so I said "Ah what the hell," I’ll see what it looked like and get an idea for how much work it would take to do the swap. I had pulled up the forum post from 2016 written by user GJLS and refreshed my memory on how exactly to attack this.

Removing the Montero Sport bumper from the Montero was the first hurdle, and I immediately ran into a problem trying to remove the lower two nuts of the four main fasteners that hold the bumper support brace to the body of the Montero. You need a 12mm socket to remove the nut, however the stud off the bumper support has an alignment pin on the end (known as a Dog point) that is about as long as a finger. too long for any 12mm deep socket I own. I resorted to sitting there with an 8mm deep socket and a long extension over the end of the stud then proceeded to bend it back and forth a gazillion times to break the ends off and access the nuts. From the Montero, I took every nut bolt and bracket relating to the bumper to make sure I didn't end up screwing myself.

Now I know that all you need from the Montero is: The bumper cover, the main bumper support bracket, the two vertical outer support brackets by the wheel wells of the bumper, the turn signals, and the turn signal pigtails (they're not the same plug as the mighty max signals, so be sure to cut these wires off nice and long). I'll attach an exploded diagram of the Montero bumper, the parts required are #1 #5 #6 #13 and save your hardware. I was able to remove the bumper from the Montero without removing the bumper cover from the support. (the less pieces you show up at the junkyard counter with, the cheaper!)

After removing the Mighty Max front Bumper and lower valence (which took a 1/4 of the time) I set the bumper on the front and got my first glimpse of it.... I then noticed how much of a hill I was about to climb. The Montero bumper sat away from the grille in the middle and left about a half inch gap that was extremely noticeable, and the main bumper support brace was already sitting against the core support (main body) of the mighty max, so this was not going to be as easy as bolting it on and cutting the excess ends off.

Once back at the Garage I set the bumper up against my own MM and started looking at it again. I came up with the idea on how to modify the Montero main bumper support brace to recess it further into the truck and hide the gap on the top of the bumper. To do this I first removed the bumper cover from the bumper brace. Then punch out the two upper studs of the support brace. I set the back of the stud inside of the smallest socket that would fit over it's round head and then hammered down on the threaded side of the stud until it separated from the brace (just a couple whacks nothing bent) I then freed the outer two vertical supports of the main bumper brace by drilling the three spot welds on the top of each side. I found that if you bend the two outer vertical supports inwards, you can bolt the brace onto the truck without having to drill new holes or install rivet nuts as was done in the other forum post. I then found a chunk of 1x2 square tubing I cut two 1" long pieces to put between the brace and the vertical supports. I welded the spacer to the vertical portion of the bumper brace first then reinstalled the brace to the truck. I then could see how far up the horizontal beam of the bumper support needed to be pulled. i pulled the horizontal beam up till it was about 1/8 or so below the mounting screw holes for the lower screws of the marker lights (so you don't have to remove the bumper to take them off) with my height to the vertical bars marked I took the support off the truck, then pulled the vertical bars inwards (lined up with another line shown in pictures) then welded the vertical bars to the horizontal beam at the marked height.

CUT TIME :chainsaw:
With the bumper support back together I marked the ends of the horizontal beam where it was touching the body beneath the marker lights and cut out a 4" section (I needed a bit more later but this was a good start) and I loosely reinstalled the bumper cover onto the bumper support, and set it up against the truck to see how much of the cover I was going to have to trim. There really isn't a whole lot to trim. you will need to make some clearance below the marker lights, and trim the raised corners of the bumper cover off near the wheel well. After the bumper was fitting up against the body of the truck nicely I started looking at the wheel opening and I marked with tape where I wanted to lop off the excess ends of the bumper. I cut everything roughly with a cutoff wheel then brought it closer with a dremel and file. Now I could start figuring out how to mount the outer bumper corner brackets which are key for pulling the ends of the bumper flush with the fenders of the mighty max. The Montero Sport is wider than the MM but not by all that much. The bumper Isn't tapering inwards towards the wheels but you do have to hold them in to make it flush with the fenders. with the wheel openings cut, the Montero end brackets were too wide and the tops no longer had a hole to fasten them to, so I ended up bending the mounting flange 90 degrees back and cutting off the excess. I could then drill a new hole through the top of the bumper cover and add a small button head screw and nylock nut. I don't think a plastic panel retainer would be strong enough so I'm just bolting it. It would be nice to think of some sort of cap for this later to prevent it from scratching the fender if the bumper moves, but I'll come back to that later. I then remounted the bumper to the truck.

With the bumper reinstalled I started assessing how to go from the bumper brackets to the body of the truck. My 91 pickup had the metal front bumper, and the wing brackets were too long to bolt to the Montero bumper. I miraculously had a pair of the 93-96 plastic bumper brackets in my horde of parts (totally cheating I know) which are far shorter than the 86-92 brackets. I then bent the bumper side flanges of the wing brackets 180 degrees around with heat, a heavy hammer, and a vise. When installing these the top bolt of the bumper's bracket lines up perfectly with the lower bolt hole of the wing bracket. for, here I just flexed the brackets around till I liked the fitment of the bumper both in distance from the fender and height from the body line.

And that's pretty much it! I'm going to paint the bumper body color and then wrap below the lower body line black to break up all the blue and I may add another small bracket from the underside of the core support to the lower bumper brace, somewhere around the middle under the radiator to the factory lower mounting hole of the Montero bumper support for some extra stability. I'll update everyone on the finished product, but that's another day. In the end it wasn't all that bad and I finished it in one day but I'd say it took a little more than just "some" fabrication and I will probably do more in the future to add some more strength to the bumper. but this is to a point where I would feel comfortable doing 95 in a headwind and not worry about losing the bumper.

If there are any more questions I'll try to check up on this for a while and answer more questions.