I removed it to look at the connections for the fuel tank and ran into a snag.
Is there an ideal method for removing and replace this plate?
Car on the ground? Off the ground? Both?
When I removed it, the car was already jacked off the ground. This put tension on the entire plate (b/c of the sway bar pushing on it) and it sort of had to be yanked off since it was getting hung up on the studs. Is it better to remove the rear hex bolts (top circle in the photo) while the car is down, before jacking? You can reach them from behind the tire. Then once jacked, I could remove the other 2 nuts?
More importantly, I had a heck of a time getting it back on. This was because when the car is on jackstands, the front wheels are not loaded. This makes the sway bar push down, since the wheels were hanging in the air. I was unable to push up the plate enough while also trying to thread the bolt.
After a while, I finally realized I could lower the car back onto the ground, to make the sway bar "retract", which would allow easier threading of the rear hex bolts.
I bolted up the 2 center nuts, to hold the plate in place, lowered the car down, smacked it with a rubber mallet to get it to seat,
and finally was able to thread and fasten the rear hex bolts....with the car on the ground.
