Well I finished this up yesterday.

Originally I was debating whether or not to put the center emblem back on, since the original emblem is a little oversized IMO. So I decided to compromise and put one on, but to use a smaller one instead. The local dealer had 3 sizes for me to check out. The one I got is the one from the rear trunk of the Altima I believe. At freaking $20 for the emblem it seemed like a rip-off (I expected about 1/4-1/2 that, but it did have the 2-sided tape already on it so it would save me the trouble of having to break the tabs off my OEM and epoxy it to the grill. Now I love the size and the way it turned out (both the emblem and grill in general) so it's money well spent.

I'll include the last picture of the mock up so you can get a look without the emblem. Keep in mind it was just the mock up, so it hadn't been painted and thus appears grey as opposed to black.





Mock-up w/o emblem

Nice.

Yeah, it looks better with the emblem

mcm4090 wrote:Nice.

Hey MCM, where are you located?

Sweet! How hard was it to do?

That looks awesome.

How did U do it? Where did you get all the material?

It wasn't too difficult, but turned out to be a little more then I thought before I started.

I didn't realize that the grill itself is the entire black plastic portion which contains the honeycomb meshing that I eliminated, as well as all the grill connection points. The chrome portion is nothing but trim, and ONLY connects to the plastic backing.
My intentions originally were to simply remove the black part, and replace it, but soon realized that this was going to be impossible since there was no way to connect the chrome trim back to the truck. Because of this, the honeycomb mesh has to be cut out of the black portion of the grill, so the black grill backing could be retained and kept in place. Here are the high level steps involved. If there is some real interest froma number of people, i may consider taking it back apart (since I am pretty familiar with it now), and do an actual detailed write-up with photos.

1. Remove entire grill assembly from the front of the vehicle. If I remember correctly, this can be done by:
A. Removing the 4 clips up top by the radiator
B. Releasing the 4 large push thumb tabs behind the grill just above the bumper.
C. Release the 4 square twist bolts (plastic) by twisting counter clock-wise using a flat head screwdriver. You can see these clearly by looking directly into the honeycomb grill towards the radiator, right along the far right and left sides. These were not used again as I had to cut away this portion of the honeycomb, plus since they are soft plastic, they seemed to strip away very easily.

2. Separate the grill backing from the chrome grill trim. This can be a PITA! There are 6 screws which are easy to remove, then a bunch of tough thumb tabs. Most the tabs I just broke off as they seemed a bit overkill. Plus I didn't care to deal with these damn things ever again.

3. Now you will need to cut/saw the black honeycomb out of the grill backing. I cut right along the edges of all three inlets, and removed everything.

4. Cut whatever material you want to use as your new filler, into the exact shape of the 3 inlets, just larger then the inlets themselves. You will need to make notches here and there for clearence for the grill trim guides. Be sure not to block the holes for the 6 screws either. Also, you will need to bend your new shapes with a slight curve in order to match the curved contour of the grill.

5. Once the 3 new pieces are cut to shape and prepped (cleaned and painted), gently put them in place on top of the grill backing, and lay the chrome grill trim down on top. You should now be able to squeeze the entire grill assembly (backing and trim) back together, sandwiching your new material firmly in place. Assuming your fitment is good, you shouldn't have any problems with the pieces moving around. Reattach the 6 screws holding the grill trim onto the grill backing.

6. Reattached entire grill assembly back onto the truck.

7. Add emblem. If you wanted to use the OEM Nissan emblem, you could break/cut off the 4 push tabs, and glue this to the center of the grill, but I opted to buy the smaller emblem with the double sided tape, and just stuck it on.

Npath wrote:That looks awesome.

How did U do it? Where did you get all the material?

Almost forgot. As far as the material, being in I.T., I just happened to come across an old server cabinet that was going to be thrown out, so I used the grill material off of the front of the cabinet. The piece was about 5'x2', but I only used half of it. Turned out this stuff was absolutely PERFECT. Nice pattern, good color and perfect thickness.

G35TR wrote:

Npath wrote:That looks awesome.

How did U do it? Where did you get all the material?

Almost forgot. As far as the material, being in I.T., I just happened to come across an old server cabinet that was going to be thrown out, so I used the grill material off of the front of the cabinet. The piece was about 5'x2', but I only used half of it. Turned out this stuff was absolutely PERFECT. Nice pattern, good color and perfect thickness.

Oh no! Now I've got more to worry about than missing patch cords and mice in my server room. I wonder if security will notice me trying to walk out with door off a 72" tall rack.

MARKSPATH wrote:I wonder if security will notice me....

You mean security actually cares where you work?

Seems like the only thing they care about where I work is where you park. But walk out with a Sun M4000 and no-one bats an eye. Don't know if I should be happy that I'm not hassled or disturbed that I could roll out with whatever I want.

Isn't that the truth. While it wasn't server/network gear, several years ago we had someone steal a large network printer (HP 5SI), which weighs quite a bit. Turned out he lied to our security guard, and our guard actually helped him load the printer into the back of his pickup truck.

G35TR wrote:Isn't that the truth. While it wasn't server/network gear, several years ago we had someone steal a large network printer (HP 5SI), which weighs quite a bit. Turned out he lied to our security guard, and our guard actually helped him load the printer into the back of his pickup truck.

Classic social engineering ploy: impersonating a service tech.

I actually looked around our main server rooms today, but alas, no suitable orphaned rack doors to be scavenged. But I think there's some abandoned HP racks in a telecom room that might have perforated doors. I'll have to see if they are still there and if I can make a deal.

My only concern is the mesh coming loose once its mounted. After amputating the OEM grill I wouldn't want the mod to fall apart on me. Was there any room for some tiny screws to hold the mesh in place?

MARKSPATH wrote:My only concern is the mesh coming loose once its mounted. After amputating the OEM grill I wouldn't want the mod to fall apart on me. Was there any room for some tiny screws to hold the mesh in place?

from the step-by-step, it sounds like there might be opportunity to use some epoxy to hold the mesh on the grill shell. i would probably trust epoxy before i trust tiny screws in the grill plastic.

~mike

Hey G35TR I wanna see some more pics of those tires. I'm looking into those wranglers or some bf goodrich ats , what size did you get ?

edit: Ok I found original post when you got the tires. still got any more pics?

MARKSPATH wrote: My only concern is the mesh coming loose once its mounted. After amputating the OEM grill I wouldn't want the mod to fall apart on me. Was there any room for some tiny screws to hold the mesh in place?

There should definately be enough room to run some screws through to really secure the filler material if you wanted to do that. For the side pieces, the best place would probably be in the two corners (upper far corner, and lower close corner in relation to the center of vehicle). As far the for the center piece, there is more then enough room on the top, and maybe enough along the bottom. It would probably be best though to just cut your material to take advantage of the 2 existing screw holes used to bind the grill backing and grill trim together. Note that this would only apply to the center piece.

Actually, I had originally wanted to use something to secure the filler pieces into place. But after seeing how they fit into the surrounding material, along with the pressure holding them sandwiched in, I didn't feel like it was needed. There is really no place for the material to go. It is completely surrounded. One thing that I considered doing before taking it all apart which may work well, is using a hot glue gun to glue the pieces in place at the corners.