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My plastic grill (the formerly black plastic piece) is now a faded light grey. I was thinking about painting it with semi gloss black. Anyone done this?
I was thinking about just taping off the chrome edges and the blue oval in the center and painting it in place.
Did exact same thing as you. Use a good degreaser and clean it up first. Mask off the chrome and spray many many light coats or youll get runs in the corners. Remove it from the truck also, over spray will be a pita to remove off your hood and bumper, and you wont know its there until you touch it . Grill comes out easily enough, few screws on top and a couple clips on the bottom, just be gentle with it. Good luck
It looks so sun damaged I don't know if it would survive a removal. I'm just going to mask it really well and spray in place. I'll raise the hood so I won't have to mask it. I was going to put some lacquer thinner on a rag and clean it by hand.
Thinner might cause more damage, a good degreaser would be sufficient. Cover your fenders and bumper with old bed sheets or drop cloths if spraying on the truck. Spray paint gets everywhere
The grill shell will come out without falling apart, and it's a much safer and cleaner choice than spraying it with it installed. Otherwise you've got to make sure you completely mask the entire radiator, bumper, lights, etc... Four screws up top IIRC, two clips on the bottom and it'll come right out.
Personally I removed the grill and then popped the inserts out as well, they were so sun faded and damaged they were white in some places. They still came out easily enough, just had to be careful with the clips. Popping the Ford oval out was the hardest part, the inserts themselves came out fine with some care.
It took me two cans of Kyrlon Fusion for plastic to paint all three inserts. I did a lot of coats to ensure they'd stand up to road debris and whatnot. They've been on for over two years since I painted them and they're still looking like the day I sprayed them.
I bought a 2006 grille that had bubbling chrome. I peeled all the chrome off
I then cleaned it and used adhesion promoter on it. I then painted it dupli-color Oxford white. Then cleared it
I then painted the shell underneath black
Combined the 2 halves
Pictures won't load, who knows why. The new app still sucks.
Anyway, here's the 2 halves
Looks good right?! Nope! Looks like crap! The moral of the story, don't trust the spray paint if doing body color.
Last edited by JuanHuevos; Jul 15, 2015 at 09:02 PM.
Reason: Pictures wouldn't load from the app
I'm about to paint mine as I'm in the process of doing the entire truck. As the other have said, it's very easy to take out. What I've learned from the paint people is that plastic requires a different prep than the medal. I'm told that if I use acetone or MEK, I'll have to wait a month to paint it because it gets in the pores and prevents the paint from sticking. A degreaser and glass cleaner is what I was told to use, then spray a product called Bulldog to prime the plastic, then paint. If you want it to stick, this is the ticket.
The grill shell will come out without falling apart, and it's a much safer and cleaner choice than spraying it with it installed. Otherwise you've got to make sure you completely mask the entire radiator, bumper, lights, etc... Four screws up top IIRC, two clips on the bottom and it'll come right out.
Personally I removed the grill and then popped the inserts out as well, they were so sun faded and damaged they were white in some places. They still came out easily enough, just had to be careful with the clips. Popping the Ford oval out was the hardest part, the inserts themselves came out fine with some care.
It took me two cans of Kyrlon Fusion for plastic to paint all three inserts. I did a lot of coats to ensure they'd stand up to road debris and whatnot. They've been on for over two years since I painted them and they're still looking like the day I sprayed them.
Awesome!!! Are the lights OEM or aftermarket?
My grille is similar, except i just used plastidip for the inserts.
I painted the grill on my '02 Ex with gold to match the cladding. It looked so much better compared to the faded/blotchy gray. I did have to respray it once after about three years since it started chipping some (did some decent highway miles), but otherwise, it held up fine.
Did the same thing with my Cruze and haven't had as good of luck...it's so much lower that stones hit it all the time and chip away little bits. I just did some touch ups on the face edge and it still looks pretty good up close.
Also agree with removing the grill to paint it. So much easier. Grill itself is easy to pull off, and taking the plastic mesh part out isn't that hard either. The parts that have to flex to unhook from the tabs are somewhat hidden, so sun damage shouldn't affect them much. Mask off (or even remove) the blue oval and you're ready to go.
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