Heyyou1982

I am in need of help for what seems the simplest of installs. I've none numerous installs and maintenance and never wanted to strangle some one more than this. I bought a Stampede Hood Protector, the one that goes behind the grill and has adhesive tape that secures to the hood. Installing it on a 2013 F-150 XLT. To make a long and painful story short. Here's what I did:

1) Read instructions and watched instructional video on company website
2) Removed six nuts, two bolts & five clips holding the grill to the hood.
3) Placed hood protector on hood and lined up where I thought it should sit on hood, loosely screwed in two screws on either side of hood protector
4) Removed adhesive backing and stuck it to hood.
5) Tried to put grill back on but the clips would no longer go in.
6) Removed grill, pried adhesive off and moved hood protector farther up the hood.
7) Tried again and again and still clips will not go in.

I now have two broken clips on my grill, a very angry looking face and a hood protector that I want to throw at random people.

If anyone has installed this could you please tell what I am doing wrong or how stupid I am. I tried searching the forums and came up with nothing, if there is a thread that I missed please be kind to point me in the right direction.



When trying to push the clips in, the grill and hood protector were hitting on the outside edges it seemed.

DTH

I have the same style protector except for painted, I also broke a couple of clips while installing.From what I understand from another thread on here the clips have nothing to do with holding the grill on they're for line up till bolts can be installed at the factory.

Heyyou1982

Ya I agree with you, the thing that bugs me is that in the instructions for the grill it says these clips are supposed to go back in when from what I can see thats impossible. I tried again today to install this hood protector, I removed the remaining metal clips from the plastic tabs. When I have the hood protector in place the grill will not go back in, the clips can't even get lined up to the slots. The grill has to move up at least 1/2" for the plastic tabs to go back into the slots but the grill is hitting the hood protector. I emailed Stampede Products last week with an explanation and photos of what happened and got no response. I called them today and left a message and got no response. Terrible customer service from Stampede Products, I will never support this company again.

Heyyou1982

Well just in case anyone else runs into this problem I will tell everyone what has happened. I called Autoanything.com (where I purchased the hood protector from) and told them my issues. They told me to send them the photos and they would try and get ahold of Stampede Products on my behalf. Well a few days later I received an email reply from Stampede Products asking for my phone number so an engineer could call me. Now I don't know if Stampede just finally got around to replying or Autoanything.com told them too. The engineer called me the same day and I told him of the issues I was having. He informed me that this is one of the most difficult installs they have and that he understood my concerns about the installation instructions. He told he would send some more info the next day. A few days later I followed up after not hearing anything and he sent me a picture of a hood protector they had installed on an F-150 in the shop and told me to take the same picture of my truck with the hood protector on. I did so and they've now told me that the hood protector I have is not formed right and they are going to ship me a new one.


Here's what mine looks like, instead of a stepped angle its just a slopped angle so it doesn't conform to the hood


This is what it should look like

Heyyou1982

Just to provide a quick update. Stampede Products shipped the replacement to the wrong address and won't respond to my emails. Autoanything.com has stated they can't do anything to help even though their aware that they shipped me a defective product and the manufacture was the cause of it taking so long to figure that out. Terrible service all around.
I wrote a thread about my experience with Stampede Products and Autoanything.com here: https://www.f150forum.com/f7/my-stam...rience-267735/