Yeah, my ultimate goal is higher, too. Just tryin to bust through this wall at 40mpg. Maybe I need to change my plugs.
Congrats on the house, Daox. I've moved a couple times in my lifetime. Pretty exciting. One thing I've found: the quicker you get rid of the cardboard boxes, the sooner it feels like home. But if you're anything like me, there will always be a couple of them lurking in the basement, silently mocking you...
Okay, Anyway. Where was I? Oh yes. The grille block.
I'm not leaving blue tape on there. Looks tacky. So I scrounged around the garage and came across my floor jack. It's a pathetic little thing I bought at Meijer on clearance. It gets the job done, but it's got a flimsy piece of metal that sorta snaps on top of it as a dust shield or something. Honestly, I think it's just a place to plaster a label. So I snatch that up, and with my aviation-grade tin snips, whack it into six little brackets. I popped the hood and slid them behind the coroplast. A little adjustment here, a little tweak there... I think it'll work.
Removing the badge had given me an idea for attaching the brackets to the car. On my lunch break, I went to the local NAPA and picked up some 3M double-sided foam tape used for weatherstripping and what not.
AHH! SPIDER! Ha! Just seein' if you were awake. My wife, bless her heart, likes to throw random insects into spider webs and watch the carnage. I know, weird, huh? And she thinks grille blocks are strange. Actually, she doesn't. She's quite understanding.
Anyway, I stuck the tape on the brackets and slid the brackets down the backside of the coroplast and stuck them puppies down tight. I had pre-drilled a hole in each bracket, so I took a 90 degree pick and poked through the hole in the bracket from the backside and through the coroplast to locate each attach point. Then I removed the coroplast.
Dang. I shoulda painted them dang brackets first. I'm such a tool.
The blazing white coroplast was just too much. Gotta paint it. And no, I'm not painting teeth on it. Sorry. I layed it on the front lawn and blasted it with some flat black spray paint. It's made for plastic and works quite well, if not somewhat expensive. (edit: it's Krylon Fusion. $4.79 at Meijer)
Hey, look! My lawn is smiling back at me!
After it dried overnight, I installed it.
The top of the coroplast is somewhat unsupported yet, and I'm afraid that at speed it might be bowing back and not staying flush (hee hee, he said flush again!) with the front lip of the hood. I'll have to address that next.