APR Splitter Install (PICS)

After staring at my APR box for a month now. I finally got off of my lazy ass and installed it.

First thing I did was go online and look for any vids/pics of the process and was disappointed there was only one video and while it helped me. The most important information was not shown. It was on the ground at one point and then the whole bumper was back on car.

I don't have a video camera but I think the pics will help folks to really get a look at the process without having to stop, rewind, repeat a video.

I will post multiple comments to prevent it from being one big ass post that will get quoted and drive people crazy.

The car being used is a '16 GT with PP for reference and I know there are some differences between the models so keep this in mind. For instance, the vid I watched the belly pan had a rubber deflector that my car does not have.

When all said and done, this is what you hope to see

First step.

My car is still at stock height (air lift in the near future) so I was able to take the bumper off without have to lift the car.

I am not going to go into lot's of detail on removing the bumper. There are many sites that show the steps.

Removing the radiator cover and the top bumper bolts are straight forward and simple to remove.

On my car the bottom of the bumper, the belly pan is held on by 6 screws. Two sit in the round recesses and 4 are in the middle at the very back of the belly pan. The rest are held on by push pins. There are two that are on the bottom on each side and one vertical on each side as well.

Here are the four screw holes at the very back of the pan and you can see one of the push pin holes at the right



In this picture the outermost push pin holes are where the clamps are and the vertical piece between the clamps and the first hole you see is where the vertical pin is located.

The only thing remaining to remove the bumper cover is the PITA part that everyone talks about.

First, You have to remove the three wheel well liner pins, I actually went one step further and removed the next higher up one at the top of wheel well.

Pull back the liner and disconnect the three light harnesses.

Now the fun part. There is one screw on each side of the bumper that has to be removed to prevent breaking anything.


Peel back the wheel well liner and look into the opening, right where the top of the bumper meets the fender you will see the bolt. It points towards the front of the car.

It is 7mm and I used a regular small wrench and it took forever as you can only turn it a tiny bit at a time. Between that and holding back the liner with the other hand resulted in lot's of cussing and my arms going numb.

I recommend finding a ratcheting wrench and your arms will thank you for it.

Once you remove this bolt. Pull outward on the side of the bumper cover at the fender line and with gentle but steady pressure, the cover will pop out.

Once separated. The bumper cover can be removed. I was able to remove it by myself and place it straight down in front of the car.

I needed assistance to carry it into the house. I'm getting two old to work in a cold ass garage, so I brought it into my office.

Now the real work begins.

I have two small card tables that I sat together and placed the bumper cover on. This allowed me to move the cover around without risk of scratching it.

All references at this point will be from me standing at the back of the bumper cover looking forward, any changes and I will indicate it.

The bumper cover consists of two pieces, the cover itself and the belly pan.

They are held together by nine screws across the front and two on each side.

Side note: I will talk about these nine screws across the front at the end and some ideas I came up with that can provide options for others attempting this install.

Back on topic.

In this pic. You can see the nine screws going across the front of the cover


Here are the two on one of side. The white line is their location. There are two on the other side as well



Important note - The nine across the front sit in recessed circles from the underside and the 4 total on the sides do not. They stick out from the underside of the pan.

This turns into a pita, because you don't want the side screws preventing the splitter from sitting flush with the pan. What makes it a pita is the front most screw(reference above picture) sits under the lip of the bumper cover and you cannot access it from a straight down approach.

So, in order to get the splitter to sit correctly, you have to undo all of the nine bolts from the front as well as the 4 on the sides to separate the belly pan from the bumper cover to drill two holes in the splitter.

I'm sure some chose to leave that screw out or mount the splitter with the bolt heads sticking out.

I took the time to undo all of the screws and separated the two

Damn it. I got ahead of myself.

Please do this step before the previous one. This is important and I can't believe I left it out.

OK, before you separate the belly pan from the bumper cover to drill those two, yes two holes.

You must do this first. Still can't believe I forgot this.

To make drilling all of the holes that need to be drilled easier and not having to work with the weight of the bumper cover itself and again risking scratching it. I came up with a plan to only have to work with the belly pan itself.

I sat the whole thing down on the splitter and aligned the splitter with the wheel well opening and used my tape measure to measure the edge of the splitter with the edge of the bumper until they were both equal distances.

I then used clamps to hold the two together and drilled three holes, one near the front and two in back near each side.



First hole drilled


Side holes, showing clamps as well




This allowed me to do the step above. I separated the cover from the pan and was able to only use the pan when I drilled the remaining holes. I put the pan back on the splitter and threaded three APR supplied bolts into the holes i drilled. This put the pan exactly where it needed to be.

Drill time.

APR included 12 bolts which I used all of. I just spaced them out where I thought they would give the most support and drilled holes through the pan and splitter at the same time.

The instruction sheet said to use a 1/4 bit. I don't know if they changed the bolt sizes but a 1/4 was way too small for these bolts. I started with pilot holes and then went up to a 19/64 bit, this gave a nice snug fit that required me to screw the bolts in. Going to a 5/16 bit the would have gone in easier. The tighter fit also prevented them from falling out going from under the splitter to the top when bolting them down.

The four screw holes on the end were drilled with a smaller bit, since the side bolts are small.

Here is the pan on the splitter right before I started drilling. You can see the bolt holding the two together. I also removed the clips before I started


Here you can see some of the bolts I drilled






I also drilled out the holes where the recesses are for the two screws that hold the pan to the car as well as only two holes for the push pins in the back. The others are not obscured by the splitter and don't need to be drilled.

Since the splitter is flat and prevents the two screws and two push pins from going back into place. I opened these four holes to the diameter of the push pins and permanently attached washers on the screws.

I used a step bit that i got a Harbor Freight in a 3 pack for 4 bucks. I opened the holes to 3/4

Here is the bit I used

I don't know if everyone will agree with this step or not.

There are a bunch of weep holes in the pan as well to drain water and such and I didn't want water pooling between the pan and splitter, so I drilled matching weep holes in the splitter as well.

Here are all of the holes drilled and now ready to attach.


Swiss cheese

I attached the pan back to bumper cover and attached it with the pan to the splitter.

Next Step.

Adding the support rods.

There are many ways of adding them and I chose to attach them to the underside of the bumper cover.

I wanted them to sit more in the middle of the bumper but not too close in. Since I don't have a front plate. I used the center line of the bumper and placed them eight inches out from there.

I used a tape measure to measure out 8 inches and with the help of blue painters tape I marked the locations.

Drilling this holes was also a pita. The space is limited between the underside of the bumper and where the lower grill portion sticks out. A regular drill didn't fit. So, I had to use my angled drill and I still had to start the hole at a slight angle.



Before I did any drilling I had to remove the inside bumper piece between the upper and lower grills. it is held in by three tabs, one on each end and one in the middle, push them down and pull the insert piece towards you.



Here is what it looks like once removed


And the space it occupies



Once the holes were drilled. I installed the support rods and tightened them down finger tight to prevent the rod from flopping around when I drilled the bottom holes in the splitter.

I measured the distance from the front of the splitter to the leading edge of the support rod mounts making sure they were equal and the same distance apart from each other and marked the bottom holes and drilled.

Here is one of the holes for top bolts inside the bumper cover


Here are the nuts installed. I used blue loctite on the support rod nuts

I put the insert back between the upper and lower grills and here is the finished install.





Now the bumper has been sitting in my office for 3 days now. Cause I am too lazy to take my old ass out there in the cold and install it.

OK. Now that it is done.

The bumper will probably sit for a day or two more in the office so if anyone wants any other pics, let me know and I can take them.

Regarding the nine bolts that I mentioned near the top of this whole thing.

Originally I wanted to use them and really bolt the front of the splitter on good. The bolts stick up pretty far and I thought there would be plenty of threads left with the splitter attached, but it didn't work out that way. They were too short.

Those nine bolts as well as the two under the pan are set in recesses to prevent them from getting damaged if you drag the pan over something. The four on the sides stick out because you cannot damage them from running something over. The wheel will stop you.

If you wanted to use the nine, get longer bolts that will work with the clips or replace both the bolts and clips altogether. I would use the same type of button head bolts that come with the splitter to prevent them from getting damaged.

Also, if you are worried about the alignment of the support rods and drilling. You could build a template using chop sticks, straws, dowels, whatever. Space them apart based on how you want them, glue, nail, whatever a brace between them like the letter H and use that as a guide.

You can even cut the ends at the correct angle as well.

Good luck! This is just one of many ways to attach the splitter and if anyone has any questions, just let me know.

very nice! I would do this in a heart beat...i kinda want to do it still....I just wish it wasn't carbon fiber personally. Would much rather have oem style plastic and that would also reduce the cost.

good job though! don't wait put it on!

I also took advantage of the bumper being off the car and being so cold out started installing the tint kit for the lights.

I first removed one of the fog lights thinking it would be easier just working with the light without the bumper being in the way. But was disappointed once I realized the tint is cut based off the lights being on the car as they don't completely cover the lens and you need it on the car to place it properly.

I will say having the blinkers and fogs blacked out looks bad ass on a black bumper and I cannot wait to install the rest of the kit.

Looks great!

It's disappointing that the splitter blocks off the brake cooling ducts in the factory belly pan.