Ford truck:
"precision" billet grille. yeah right rant.
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so i ordered the main and bumper grilles from precision billet grilles last week. they showed up yesterday and i was stoked to go to my buddies shop after i got off work to put them in.
the bumper grille went in no problem and took all of about 5mins. thats to be expected though seeing as how it basically just clips in the same place as the license plate bracket. of course they forgot to provide the hardware for that grille so i had to use some extra nuts/bolts/washer we had at the shop.
and now for the main grille. what a complete pain in the *** and all around terribly engineered design. lets start with the fact that they shipped it in the absolute weakest junk *** box you can find with nothing but some paper in it for protection. so of course it got smashed to hell during shipping and bent some of the bars. we straightened them out and you cant tell now but if they just put some damn bubble wrap in there this could have been avoided and i think for the money they charge they can afford it.
so we get the stock grille and shell out and cut the grille away from the shell. this is no problem, we just used an air saw then a sanding wheel for an extra clean look even though you cant really see the area you cut out after installing the billet grille.
now the problem is that the grille was no where near the contour of the stock grille so we had to bend the entire structure back and forth until we got it to fit in the shell where it was flush. the next problem we encountered was the mounting brackets. there are 4 on the top and 4 on the bottom. the outside two on the top and bottom work with little to no modification but the center two top and bottom are no where close to where they are supposed to be. there is nothing to bolt them to. the plastic tabs that we left in tact when we cut out the stock shell were about 1/2 inch too short to bolt the metal grille tabs in. we ended up having to fab our own metal bracket in order to get the top two center mounts bolted in. the bottom two center tabs just ended up where we could wedge the bolt through to hold it tight against the metal frame on the truck after all the other tabs were bolted in place.
all in all, fours hours later, the grilles look amazing in the truck. i am glad i ended up with 28 bars rather than 18 from carriage works and the polished finish looks great in contrast to my gray paint. i am super happy with the finished product but the manner in which we had to achieve this result was ridiculous. its like whomever designed the main grille did so from a picture of our truck with no actual vehicle to use as a mock up. that combined with the terrible packaging and lack of hardware for the bumper grille will definitely make me think twice about buying my next grille from precision. if you can find a grill that is already connected to a grille shell that will save you a ton of head aches. you can simply pop the old assembly off and replace it with the new one. perhaps i should design such a billet grille.
ill throw pics up in here tonight when i get home and also in my mod thread. rant over. lol
Camaro :
I took it to my body guy and asked him to install it after painting the car. Before, I had removed the factory grill (the built-in Camaro plate) because someone had drilled multiple holes in it. Knowing I was going with this billet one, I didn't bother keeping the factory one.
My body shop called today and told me that the hardware I dropped off with the grille wasn't enough; there was nothing to stop the grille from moving side to side. They weren't sure if something was missing, or if this grill was supposed to be installed over the factory one (I don't think this is the case, but I'm not positive). Looking for any installation advice that might help. Thanks.
On the other hand you get this from a late model gmc:
Well the Billet Grille from Amazon arrived today and is installed .... and for the price this thing is actually Very solid and feels and looks amazing!
It's made by APS and has some great reviews at the sellers site (got it on Amazon but this is where it comes from). 225 reviews and most all are all 5 stars with an overall 4-1/2 star rating!!! ... for me the install took about 20 minutes from start to to finish ... Very Easy!!!
I think it looks perfect and the fit is spot on ... for $54 Shipped ... I couldn't be ANY happier.
Any questions about this Billet feel free to ask.
Gonna get the little strip in the bumper next week (that's only 23 bucks)
Take a look at the front end now ..........
