Lower & Upper Grille Block Ideas (Toyota Echo)

[HyperMileQC]

Simple question, does your Echo have an A/C? If yes do you plan to remove it?

[CigaR007]

No A/C, but I do wish I had it sometimes, especially on long road trips. But I survived thus far, so I guess I do not need it.

[Sean T.]

Do you think I would be able to do something similar to this with a can of expanding foam from home depot? Just for the top grille... (the spear is not there anymore, but instead mesh, very similar to the echo's stock grille)



That was the best pic I had that showed the shape of the grille.

Did you just use regular aluminum foil as the liner for the foam?

[2000neon]

Take a look at Sven7's thread on his Civic "Ren", he is currently doing a grill block with expanding foam.

Here it is: page 8;
Ren: My '92 Civic

There is also another red newer civic that used expanding foam for a grill block that turned out great, but unfortunately I am drawing a blank on what that thread is called...

EDIT: I found it:
Streamlining the Civic (2005 Civic EX coupe)

Vman455 did an awesome grill block with expanding foam, it starts on page 3.

[Sean T.]

Oooh thanks! That second Civic (the newer one) looks like a promising project! Only concern I have is that I don't have access, time, or funds to do fiberglassing... maybe using spray foam wouldn't be best in that case, due to the large holes that are inside (swiss cheese-like)

[Sean T.]

Foam proved un-useful for this without removing the bumper, which in my case is much more work than I can do, with today being my only day off for a while. After spraying the foam in, it slowly settled and started falling down the front of the car. After about 10 minutes of scraping off excess when it would start oozing down, I scrapped the idea and am just going to use a piece of coroplast as a grille block. It won't be flush with the body, but I'm still going to paint it body color for an interesting effect.

[2000neon]

That sucks, but live and learn. I can't offer any help about the foam as I've never used it, buy was it outside? Maybe too cold? Of you use coroplast, you can attach it from the backside of the grill to keep it hidden.

[Sean T.]

I was outside, so the temperature might have been an issue.... Unfortunately you can't get to behind the grille or even to the turn signal mounts without taking the bumper off. :/ I have some plastic fasteners that spread apart when inserted though, and they fit right through the mesh. The test fit went great, now just gotta paint it!

[2000neon]

I wonder if it wouldn't have dripped so bad if it was warmer, purely me just guessing though. I'm not familiar at all with the grills on these cars, but yeah of you can't get behind it, your idea sounds like the next best go-to. Worst case scenario you could always feed a few black zip ties through the mesh for mounting. That's what I did for my civic, just with the coroplast on the backside of the grill.

Post pics when you're done if you can, it may help others with ideas when they try to figure out how to do it.

[Sean T.]

Well, I've finished it... but idk how happy I am with it... I think I might retry it with a larger piece that wedges behind the bumper's plastic for a smoother edge, and maybe use a piece of black coroplast instead of body-color... we'll see LOL