This is a DIY to cheaply transform the ugly 03-04 plastic black grill into a slightly less ugly mesh grill.


Materials:
-1 sheet of mesh gutter-guard from Home Depot/Lowe's
-phillips screwdriver
-03-04 stock grill
-any color large zip ties
-small black zip ties
-pliers
-wire cutters


Here's mine finished:




01. Buy a sheet of mesh gutter guard in color of your preference ($2 or so).




02. Remove stock grill, it's just a series of plastic screws and push tabs.












03. Clean this dirty area under where the grill sits.




04. Line up the mesh gutter-guard with the top edge of the stock grill, and zip-tie it to the front of the grill using the grill’s mounting holes and large zip-ties (these will be cut off later, so color/looks doesn’t matter.





05. Cut the mesh with the wire cutters around the top edge of the grill, continuing to zip-tie them together as you do so.




06. Leave excess “flaps” of mesh off the sides of the grill, so that they can be wrapped around the sides.





07. Wrap the flaps around the sides of the grill, like so, zip-tie, and cut off excess mesh.




08. Use the pliers the bend the mesh along the bottom edge of the grill, still using large zip-ties to hold it in place.

09. This is how it should look thus far:





10. Now you have to deal with the corners of the mesh that stick out, between the bottom and sides.




11. This is probably the hardest part, basically you just need to get creative, bending with the pliers and cutting until the mesh sits flush with the grill in the corners, like so:








12. Now you want to go back with the wire-cutters and cut the mesh around all of the mounting holes.





13. Go around the edges of the grill, placing small black zip-ties in strategic locations where they will hold the mesh onto the grill but not be easily visible on the outside.








14. Cut the mesh out of this top section and place two small black zip-ties there as well.

15. Cut off all of the large zip-ties, and then cut off the excess of the small black ones.






16. Cut the mesh off of the grill’s end tabs.





17. Ready to be mounted:




18. Clean mounting points.





19. Mounting is reverse of removal.











Finished product:



I know it’s not for everyone, but I think it’s an improvement. Comments/suggestions welcome. See my sig for my other DIYs.

Haha not bad!

very nice! i might be doing this to my fugly 03 front end. thanks for the diy +1

looks good, but you have to fix ur bumper sag on the left side, its pretty bad

Yeah the whole bumper has a pretty bad sag actually, it was wrecked before I bought it and probably not fixed right, I'm gonna dive into it in the near future.

I would recommend painting the mesh black. It will look a lot better IMO.

I *think* they have black gutter guard. Not 100% sure though. That is a nice looking grill for such a cheap DIY, good post!

yea i want to do this now pretty bad

Yeah they do have black, but I believe it's plastic, which I'm not sure how well that would work, but you could easily paint the metal any color.

Also for anyone interested if you look at my bumper there's the same mesh in there. That was just a matter of using 2 or 3 full strips of mesh and cutting the corners to fit in near the fogs and zip-tieing. Took a total of maybe 10 minutes.

You can't see it that clearly in this pic but look down by the fogs.

im definitly gonna have to try this thanks man

very well done

+rep for detailed DIY

put some stuff that will keep it from rusting

Just finished mine...painting it black tomorrow thanks a lot man!

awesome! im gonna have to do this but im gonna paint it black. thanks for such a detailed diy.

Right on, post up a pic when you're done, that will look dope on a white tib

Definetly a great DIY...
Im gonna paint my black though..
+1 for creativity and sharing..

yet another DIY I'm gonna do tomorrow...looks really good I was just sitting looking at the front of the grille today wondering if I could just get some mesh to cover it, and you confirmed it....10000x cheaper than the billet grille too

EDIT: I just did this! it looks so much better than stock...I'm happy with it! Thanks for the DIY

Welcome . Glad it turned out good.

I def prefer the billet grill and some of the other options out there, but when $ is tight you can't go wrong with $2 gutter guard lulz

thats exactly what i did to mine, but instead of the plastic black things, i got some black superglue..
..superglue gets the job done

awesome! i just did this today and did my bumper to match. ill post pics tomorrow when i get the light. but looks way better

Yep, it actually does look cheesy. Personally, I am not a fan of those. I would take my grill over any of those.

im gonna agree that the C-mod grille is way too expensive for the look unless you have alot of spare money to waste which i dont and if i "was" going to spend that much money on a grille, it wouldnt be the C-mod, i'd go with the billet grille. So i just did this and my did my bumper also. looks way better. I know the cars a little dirty.

This seriously makes a difference. Great DIY