Removing rear bumper on RAV4 Mk3 XTR

Many thanks for that. On a personal note, pity it's not got added English rather than 100% pictorial, I've just gone through it step by step and I'm having trouble understanding each and every move. I'm sure when you get down to doing it, things will (hopefully) become apparent. Cheers.

Fully agree about the "once you make a start" bit David.  I remember fitting the towbar to mine in 2008.  That involved removing the rear bumper and I can still remember looking at the "pictorial" instructions before I started and gulping!  When I started it all became more obvious as the job progressed. I suspect the whole point is that no matter what language you speak, we all see the same in a picture - so the Toyota approach avoids translating the instructions into a whole stack of different languages.  I guess that anyone who has bought anything where the instructions are written in "Chinese English" will understand the problem faced by the manual writers

Thanks so much gentlemen. My problem is that the rear parking sensors have started to play up. Sometimes when I select reverse the sounder is on permanently, at other times it goes from that, through random bleeps, to not working at all, depending on its mood and the weather. Apparently it's the only part of the car that was 'added' as an extra ie fitted by a garage. And you can see that when examining the main control unit, bodged in with insulation tape everywhere. Steelmate, the manufacturers suggest that it's probably just the sensors that have failed and suggest I pop each one out and fit replacements. Actually they no longer sell 'like for like' replacement sensors for my unit but they can sell me a complete replacement kit for £35.87 to steal the sensors from. Then, as they say, if that doesn't cure it just fit the rest of the kit. Good value I reckon. However.... I have flipped out a sensor, but the wires are not long enough to pull through to its associated plug and socket, hence my need to remove the bumper to gain proper access to the wiring. However... I may be able to feed more wire through from the main unit that's located inside the rear wing amidst lots of sponge padding and insulation tape... If I can do that I won't need to remove the bumper. Otherwise, lying on my back under the car, when I removed the first sensor I can see that its plug/socket was taped over and caked with mud. I'm an electronics engineer and I'll bet that if all that damp mud is removed and the contacts cleaned and lubed that there's a fair chance that the sensors themselves are not actually faulty, just overcome and confused with damp mud on their contacts. We'll see.

Cracked it. The company who made the sensor system, Steelmate, have also been very helpful in this. They seemed to think that it would be the sensors themselves that had failed. Anyway, I managed to pull the sensors' wires through the mounting holes to access their connectors. The installer had bundled the extra wire lengths from individual sensors into a loop and taped it to the connector, making a big 'lump' and a mud/water trap. But I managed to pull them through using a hook and removing tape as I progressed. With all four sensors now out I disconnected them and sprayed the inside parts with Servisol 10 switch cleaner, then reassembled them. All works fine now. Although the insides of the connectors looked clean and uncontaminated, there must have been something going on, poor connection, whatever, that the switch cleaner resolved. Anyway, they all appear to work fine now, so no need to remove the bumper. And as Steelmate said, even if I did remove the bumper I'd still have the same problem of accessing the connectors. All's well that ends well and thanks to you contributors, cheers.