About the same time I was dealing with the exhaust in the previous post, the front of Bee got smooshed. Nothing major, no one was hurt, and the damage wasn't even noticeable unless I showed it to you. Essentially the front license plate bracket got pushed back into the car causing the bracket to mushroom out a little and creased the bumper cover around it. Damaged enough that if I wanted to fix it I would have to replace the entire front clip. I could have been perfectly fine leaving it alone, but this is Bee we're talking about, not my wife's Jeep...
Anyways, I had told my wife that as soon as I got the opportunity to change out the front end I would. I had wanted something more like the Transformers 2 Bumblebee, so I started shopping around to see how much it would cost. In my research I came across a vendor here on Camaro5 (I won't say who because they are gone and no longer making the bumper) who added the SS mailslot to a ZL1 front end. I liked the look, plus it was in the middle of a group buy and could get the bumper for ~$600 (obviously not counting paint & install) which was significantly cheaper than anything else I was finding aside from just replacing with another stock SS so I bought it. Over the next month or so I was entangled in a couple different battles: one with the insurance company to get them to cover it, the second with the vendor. I won't bother with the details, but in the end the insurance company paid for the repair (I still had to pay the deductible and any "upgrade" costs) and I ended up with the bumper I wanted.
Despite getting damaged in late fall and receiving the bumper in December, I decided to wait until after things started to warm back up again before going through with the install. The biggest reason was the fact that I was still using Bee as a daily driver and I knew I'd be driving in the snow/ice/sand/chemicals associated with winter in the Mile High City. April finally came around and I took Bee back to the shop that did the original stripes for me. I think he did a good job:
The next step of the process was trying to figure out how to wire the new 2nd set of fog lights. Always on? With the headlights? With the other fog lights? Where to connect? I really had no idea. The bumper came with the lights and a harness with the group buy package, but I'm no electrical engineer. Red: Hot. Black: Ground. White? Second red? Second black? Crap. Once again, I turned to the guys here on Camaro 5. The Gen5DIY guys were a huge help with figuring out where everything was supposed to go, and I decided that since the harness I had included a switch I would set the new lights up as a "on when the car is on", but still have the manual over-ride switch inside. That weekend, lights work:
I'm still having issues with the passenger side due to a crappy connector, but I think I've figured out a fix and will be working on that in the coming days.
While the car was in the shop, I decided it would probably be a good idea to get a tow hook. I like how they look, plus I need the added functionality stemming from the fact that I drive Bee in the snow and have no "safe" place for a tow truck to hook up to in case I find myself in some deep $hit. A few PM's and phone calls to Tyler at JDP later, and I had a yellow tow hook on it's way. I hoped it would arrive before the car was done at the shop while the front end was being done so the shop could do it, but the scheduling just didn't work out. A few weeks later, I finally got the courage to attempt the install myself:
