Heres a how to on removing your rear bumper on a 08-12 Jeep Liberty.
Tools needed:
Flashlight
Safety glasses
10mm socket with extension
sidecutters
Long flat head screwdriver
Drill w 1/4"ish bit
First remove the four 10mm bolts above the step pad.

Then move under the jeep behind either of the rear tires. Remove the 3 plastic rivets that secure the bumper/flare/liner to each other using the side cutters. Just snip off the backside of the rivets from the inside of the bumper.
The top of the pic shows one of these.

I would normally drill these out but that would require removing the rear wheels.
Now you'll need to disengage the 3 clips that hold the flare to the bumper. Just do one at a time and sqeeze them while gently speading the flare from the bumper. The uppermost one will be the hardest unless you have two elbows on the same arm.
Now grab the flare and pull it to the rear of the vehicle as much as you can and drill out the metal rivets that hold the plastic bumper to the body. Note,It will be at an angle, which isn't really the right way to do this but in my case the oem bumper wasn't staying much longer so this is route I chose. The better way to do this is to completely remove the flare to access the rivets head on. This would require removing more plastic rivets and pulling back the wheel well liner even more.

Now repeat on the other side. After that, the bumper should separate from the body and flares.

There are two large clips that hold the crash pad to the body in the center of the bumper. I just gave er a good pull and they separated without damage.


You are going to need the metal and plastic rivets and tools to properly reinstall, mine was temporarily reinstalled so I just used some zip ties and put the bolts back in. Make sure the butterfly style clips engage too.