Here is a before and after shot of my grill, and a shot of my LCD and pedals.

Before

After

A few more


And finally a shot of the LCD and pedals

Well, I got my speed grill in. I got home yesterday, all excited to install it. That was until I opened the box. Thats when I realized what installing actually entails. Turns out, I had to take my existing grill off, cut out the middle section of it, grind down the edges flat, then attach the insert. I never thought the install would be that involved. So I decided to lower peices first, since those are a direct clip-on. Let’s just say that they don’t just “clip-on”. I mean, thats how they’re supposed to work. It’s just not that easy. The directions say to lift up the front of the truck, and go from underneath to attach the lower peices. Apperantly the guy that wrote these directions has never worked on an 03 X. There is a lip behind the lower section of the bumper, that does not allow you to get to that airdam. Luckily, once the upper grill was removed, there was enough room to get down to the lower section from the top.

After about an hour, I got all three lower peices installed. The last peice was a bitch. I put the peices in one at a time from left to right. Small corner peice, then middle section, then small corner peice. What I didn’t realize is that it’s a lot easier to put in the corner peices, with the middle section open. So I basically screwed myself by putting hte middle section in before both end peices were done. But eventually I got them all in.

Next was the actual grill insert. Ok. So I have to cut up my existing grill. Problem number one. With what? I don’t have a die grinder, and my dremel is just too small to do this. Shit. Get on the phone and start calling around to find a grinder. I called my Dad, who told me that Billy had one. Duh, of course he does, he does tile. So I then call Billy who informs me that he has 4 of them, and I can borrow one if I need to.

8:00pm now, and it’s off to Billy’s house. Pick up the grinder, and back home I go. 8:30 by now, and it’s time to start cutting. Cut out all the inner cross peices, then I start grinding down the “nubs” left. I get the whole thing grinded down to where the insert will fit in. Now, the only part of the grill that I have left, is the frame. The stock grill frame is chrome. The directions say to then sand and paint the frame before you install it. I like the chrome ring around it. This leads me to my next problem. I need to sand it down and paint it, but I don’t want to lose the chrome look around the new speed insert.

Due to the fact that I was about 4 hours later into a job than I thought it would take to begin with, I decided to call it a night. I installed the grill on my truck, swept the garage and went to bed.

Today, while standing outside showing someone the grill, I figured out how I can do it. There is a little lip that runs around the entire grill. The original peices that were cut out, are on the inside of this lip. If I tape off the lip, I can sand the rest of the grill down, and just paint it black. It’s on the inside of the speed insert, so black would be perfect. So thats what I’m going to end up doing, although finishing my grill just became a weekend project.

Here is a crappy camera phone pic of my grill now, I have better pics at home but by the time I was done last night, I didn’t feel like uploading them. I’ll do it tonight.

BTW
In the process of cutting out the original grill, I cut the shit out of my finger tips. The grill is plastic, so when I was cutting it, it was melting. I would then flick off the plastic peices with my finger tips. Most of the time, REALLY having to dig the plastic off when it would cool and harden again. What I didn’t notice was that I was ripping my fingertips to shit while I was doing this. I didn’t notice it until Kel came in the garage to talk to me, and I stopped for a second. I didn’t notice the pain at all, it was the blood that first caught my attention. My fingertips look like a road map. Like Peter said, I need to invest in those cool MAC tool gloves.