I was about to vinyl wrap my front grille this morning and decided I would try something a little different. I went for a brushed aluminum look and it came out way better than I thought! I still have some work to do on it, but it was a lot easier than I imagined. I wet sanded with 320, then followed it up with red Scotch pad and lubricant. Cleaning bugs off in the future should be easy, just hit it with the Scotch pad

 

That looks great. Matches the aluminum on the bumper much better.

 

Looks awesome! What a great idea.

Well done

 

I really like that look!!!

 

Thanks! It's pretty hard to get a good photo of it. It really looks awesome in person. I just need to touch up a few spots and I'll see if I can get some better photos in the sunlight.

 

Someone please do the whole truck like this. For science.

 

Looks nice...

 

I'm digging it! Unique and looks good. I'd be too scared to fudge mine up if I tried this.

 

May have to try that myself.

 

LOL, leave it to Tricon to come up with this. Completely amazing sir, you not only know what your talking about in these threads, but you seem to come up with the coolest ideas. Looks fantastic, thanks for the idea.

 

Haha, thanks!

I'll be honest, I was sort of hoping it would look like crap so I could convince myself I should buy an aftermarket grille... But really happy how it turned out, so I'll take it!

 

Isn't the grille plastic? How did wet sanding plastic make it look like brushed aluminum? Did you apply a thin veneer of aluminum?

 

It's nickle plated and then chromed, so the core is PTFE, but there's layers of metal on top. Sanding/stroking it longitudinally gives it's the brushed look. It also takes all the shininess away.

 

Well you did a very nice job. Very creative and unusual. Smartly done too, as you maintained your sanding strokes dead parallel with the horizon, adding to the brushed metal effect.

Had a sander in my hands gotten a hold of it, the dam thing would look like Paisley Park.

Reps sent for the creativity, and for increasing my understanding of how these plastic chrome parts are processed.

This mod should be called "Triconed grille".

 

Haha I like the ring of that!

It's really hard to capture it in a picture, but you can really see it if you look at the Ford logo surround compared to the bars.