Does anyone know what these pads really do or how important they are? They're made from a really soft foam which clearly doesn't age well, as mine have basically turned to dust. If I barely even poke it, it looks like Thanos snapped it out of existence and just crumbles away into a fine, wispy powder. I couldn't find it on JEPC, but on the parts sites, it looks like it might be CNZ3247. I couldn't find any images for it other than crappy cartoons, but if it's CNZ3247, they're ~$45+ each (one on each side), so I'm really contemplating its importance and/or a DIY replacement. Thanks.

 

I went ahead and figured out my own solution because I didn't want to spend a lot of time tracking those foam pieces down, and I sure as hell wasn't paying $100 ($50/each) for two more crappy pieces of foam (what they'd cost if they were the ones I thought they might be).

OEM Degraded Bumper Foam from Each Side of the Bumper - See Above Post for Location Reference

I had some insulating pipe foam laying around, so I unscrewed the black plastic from the bumper, cut two (2x) 4-5" sections out of the 3' foam tubes (one for each side of the grill), opened them up at the seams, pulled the black plastic out and away from the bumper a tad, slid the cut foam vertically between the bumper and the black plastic, and then put the screw back in, so the black plastic would then hold the foam in place. See additional pix below for reference.

The Insulating Pipe Foam


Foam Pipe Insulation Next to Degraded OEM Junk


4-5" Insulating Pipe Foam Inserted Vertically Between Bumper and Black Plastic

Then, to fill the gap between the first two vertically mounted foam sections on each side and the black plastic pieces on each side, I cut two (2x) ~1.5" sections of foam out of the original 3' foam tube (now only ~2' long after cutting out the first two vertically mounted foam sections), opened them up at the seams, and slid them between the black plastic and the already inserted vertical foam pieces. As all sections of foam wanted to resume their original tubular shape, they kind of wrapped and grabbed the black plastic on top, bottom, left, and right.

Second foam piece goes in horizontally


Voila!

I guess I could've used some mounting tape or some kind of mechanical fastener, but I'm pretty sure they'll stay in place without it.

Best $0.50 I've spent in a long time.

 

Love it!!!