Thanks, I like it. After scuff sanding with a grey 3M scrubbing pad and alcohol, I used blue tape on the back, then carefully filled all of the openings with body filler / bondo before painting. The new 3D printed letters hide a lot of the imperfections under them.
Smart. Good to keep in mind should I ever redo mine
Why not buy the proper Heritsge grille from Ford ?Hi All,
wanted to post a log of my project here which was a diy version of the heritage grill on a budget.
Pic below of finished product:
I started off with the “Vintage Grill” from RPM Bronco which only comes in a gloss white unfortunately (I wasn’t a huge fan of the white grill, I am going to be wrapping my hard top white soon though however)
I dry/wet sanded this with 400,600 grit to remove all of the gloss so I could prime for paint. I used rustoleum 2 in 1 filler/sandable primer
(Below It are the trail sight deletes which I also primed. Still not sure where I stand on these but trying them out)
Forgot to take a pic before i initially painted. Masked off the surround with 3M automotive tape & sprayed with some really cheap single stage duplicolor. This was my biggest mistake, ended up having to wet/dry sand again for a recoat. This time I used rustoleum professional high performance enamel in flat black and it came out better.
Forgot to take pictures, but went to a local paint shop that mixes from manufacturer paint code and puts it in aerosols for around $30 a can. Masked off the center part, and sprayed the surround cactus grey. Cleared over everything, then wet sanded the really bad spots with 1000 grit and cleared again.
after that, it was pretty close to where I wanted it but still looked very homemade so I decided to polish & wax it with a DA and maguires ultimate polish / Yellow wax. This really brought out a much better gloss and removed some of the orange peel I had before.
the heritage style “FORD” letters I got from vasher design on Etsy, which comes with the end blank out plates (I ended up filing down the part that usually wraps around the inner headlight, as this grill has a little bit more clearance around it than stock for the amber inserts.)
Went ahead and installed it along with the trail sight deletes and got this final product. By no means perfect but I had fun learning throughout the process and didn’t spend fortune having a paint shop do it. materials all in minus the grill itself probably totaled around $150-$200, and that was with trial and error on paints etc. not bad, and I’m pretty happy with the final result for doing this whole project in an apartment.
Thank you! Picture is a little bit deceiving in the parking garage light looks a little too close to the cactus grey. I went for the silver letters, intend to swap out the black bronco script for chrome on the sides so trying to keep some continuity throughout. Here’s what it looks like in outdoor lighting-
I personally like the cutouts on this grill better since they extend all the way to the headlights. Also this grill is about $200, whereas the oem heritage grill runs anywhere from $600-$800 just for the unpainted grill not including material to paint & finish
The Heritage grille costs more, but it looks so good.
