cannonballgsu

Awesome work, I can't wait to see the final product!

Opus-n-Bill

Next, I test fit the camera mount in the grille:


Test fit them all together:


Next was figuring out how to actually attach the camera mount without gluing it into place - I wanted to be able to take it apart, in case I ever needed to fix anything.

I cut a strip from more of the scrap:


And used 3 screws to attach the top thru the grille:

Opus-n-Bill

At the bottom, I created a slot for the bottom of the camera mount to slip into.

I started by reshaping the bottom of the camera mount, and creating the below piece out of yet more scrap plastic:


Here’s that piece glued with more JB Weld to the back of the grille:


Here’s the completed hole in the grille:

Opus-n-Bill

Here’s the camera mount attached to the grille, from the back:


And from the front:


Completely assembled from the back:


And from the front:



Note: once assembled, I trimmed the bottom of the camera mount tab with a dremel to make it less visible.

Opus-n-Bill

Completely assembled with the emblem in it (though I have the LEDs out to keep them safe until it’s painted):




Note: For the positioning of the emblem/camera, I measured my existing grille, to make sure the camera had the correct position/angle. The angle on this picture makes it look like it’s kinda high on the grille, but I think it’s set correctly to look right (I hope so, since the camera mounting pretty much determines where the rest goes, so there’s no moving it now).

Here’s another picture that shows it at a better angle, though it has a lot of junk in the background:

Opus-n-Bill

Next step is painting. I wanted the honeycomb mesh to be black, and the surround to be painted Blue Jeans to match the truck.

Note: I considered filling in the LED holes to better match the 2018 sport grille, but since I got lucky and got amber rather than yellow leds with this grille, I decided to keep them, to distinguish it a bit from a 2018 grille.

I bought some Rustoleum spray-on truck bed liner, and tried it on a scrap - the texture of this matches the texture of the black plastic parts on the bumper pretty close, so I tried it on the emblem mount:


I didn’t particularly like that, so I sanded it down and resprayed it with a “normal” black paint and clearcoat:

Opus-n-Bill

Next. I cleaned and taped off the grille:


The bedliner helps hide imperfections in my fabrication work, and probably adds a little strength, so I sprayed the grille itself with that:


Next, I sent it off to the body shop, where they painted the surround Blue Jean to match. Here are the results:

BShadows

Looking really good.

Opus-n-Bill

And finally here it is installed on the truck:

Delz

iTrader: (2)

Nice !!!!!