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I'm going to put up pictures soon as I have time, but I got tired of bad looking, and unreliable grill blocks and their attachments. I decided to make my blocks out of 1/16" aluminum and find a better, but removable, attachment. I made my Insight lower grill block in two sections, one for summer and both for winter.
I used two forms of attachment. First the lower attachment. I found most of the required parts in the Lowes special hardware section. From the "hobby supplies" drawer, I found an L bracket with a hole in each section. It is about 3/4 inch long on each side. After determining the approximate location(exactness not critical) I epoxied 4 of the brackets to the back of the grill gard section - sand the aluminum first to remove and oxidation. My objective was to use a light spring to hold the bottom. I found some light 4 inch springs in a nearby section, but other cars might require a shorter spring. A 2.5 inch spring is also available, and any of the springs can be resized with diagonal cutters, though reshaping the end with needle nose pliers is a bit difficult. For attachment to the grill I used wall picture hanger brackets, these have a nice hook on one end and the other shaped end can be made straight easily with pliers. Simply attach spring to the picture hanger and hook to the backside of a grill slat. Then hook the other end of the spring to the grill guard bracket. This part is easy since the top of the grill guard is still free.
For the top attachment I used handmade aluminum angle brackets and removable automotive plastic "pop" fasteners. Lowes has a variety of these in the same section. The L brackets must be attached under the upper lip of the opening with screws, but this location is not visible on removal, without a lot of stooping. Drill a proper size hole in the bracket for the pop fastner, a bit of experimentation is needed since the pop fastner expands as the pop pin is pushed home. Start at the pop fastener diameter and go larger until it all fits. It is best to drill a somewhat smallish guide hole through both the grill guard and all the brackets first. Tape the grill guard into position for this allignment drilling, so that proper registeration of all holes can be assured. Swing the grill guards into position, install the pop fastners and you are finished with a high quality, reliable and easily removable grill guard.
To avoid scratching paint there are a couple of approaches. First, if you want the guards to lay nice and flat, you can install double sided foam strips along the edges of the aluminum grill guards. Just leave the removable plastic sheet in place on the "car" side to prevent the guards from sticking. The other approach, which I did not use, would be to purchase some of the door edge protector strips and use that. I think the fit would be a bit loose, so they might need to be epoxied in place.
This is a quickie post on my method. I'll try to post pictures later in the day when I can remember how to do that ;-)
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