First of all, I'm inept at these sorts of things so I didn't really know what to look for. I bought a grille from CARiD.com (this guy) (I didn't want to screw up my factory grille) and a mesh insert (this guy). After I ordered I thought to myself... how am I going to paint these things? I started looking for info on how best to do it myself, specifically for the insert, and found that people actually HATE this particular mesh insert. Oh well. That's what I get.
The grille was pretty perfect. It came as just a big ol' piece of black plastic totally unfinished and a little scratched up but I didn't care, I was going to bed line it anyway. The mesh insert came powder coated black. I started looking into where to find color-match paint and how to prep/prime the powder coat for painting. I fell in over my head pretty quick, and perhaps I didn't look in the right places, but it seemed that for a spray kit to accomplish such a task was about $60 (this is just for painting the mesh insert). I'd also read that it might be possible that I'd need two cans of paint, possibly of primer as well, and if I bought 2 kits that'd be $120! I started re-thinking the whole project...
I ended up taking the mesh insert to Maaco to see if they'd paint it for me, and if so how much they'd charge. Long story short, they charged me $80. Then I took the grille to a bed liner company and they only charged me $50 to bed line it. All in all I got a professional paint job of the mesh AND the bed-lined grille for the $120 I thought I might have to spend on paint for the mesh alone! I call that a score, and my takeaway is that sometimes it's NOT cheaper to "do it yourself". Please don't try to convince me otherwise, I'm lazy.
After I picked the stuff up and got it home, I started really looking at it as I prepared to put it all together. The Maaco paint on the mesh was already chipping. I'd heard Maaco isn't the best in the world, but I figured it was just a little mesh piece, not a whole bumper or something, give them a shot. But yep, the paint was scratching off. Mostly on the back though, so that's good. I thought once I got it attached it would be ok unless a rock jumped up and hit it or something, and in that case I can probably just use touch-up paint. The bed-lined grille looked amazing.
Attaching the mesh to the grille was a beast of a job. Well, kind of, I'm sure it could have been worse. You have to bend these bars over the mesh and drill holes into the grille in a couple difficult places. The locking nuts for the little bolts were tiny and difficult to manipulate with your fingers in some of the tight places they were supposed to go. It took quite a while and I almost really messed it up (drilling fail), but in the end I got it done. I did notice though that there's a plastic part on the grille that inserts into the body of the Jeep and it broke a little. It's still attached but it was cracked. Hopefully that won't become a problem.
The last hurdle, I didn't realize it when I took the grille in to get it bed-lined, but there is a rubber weatherstrip on a Jeep grille's top where it meets the hood. If I'd realized it and thought about it, I would have had the bed liner guys tape off that part or something so I could get a good, flat place to stick the weather strip on. But, oh well. I ended up sanding the heck out of it. I got it to stick really well actually! Yay!
Anyway, sorry for the long post, maybe I'm just trying to make up for lost time! Here's a bad picture of the final fruits of my labor and cash.
You can also see my name sticker on the side there. The bubbles all worked themselves out by the way, I hadn't mentioned that to y'all yet I don't think. It looks great!
Jeep wave count: Still coming...
Nice work...
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