Last night, I installed Grille Block 2.0. It's basically just a piece of sheet plastic attached to the backside of the upper grille. I used black plastic, to make it stealthy. It's 1/16" thick ABS. I bought it from McMaster-Carr a few years ago, for another project. And there was some left over.
To get at the backside of the grille, I had to remove the front bumper. That was more of a hassle than anticipated, because a couple of the bolts were rusted in place. So they had to be drilled out. (see photos below)
The bumper is off! And so are the headlights. While the bumper is off, I decided to do the wiring (or at least, the engine bay section) for the fog lights. I also wanted to troubleshoot an issue with the front marker lights.
Here's the story behind the marker lights. Both of them stopped working, at the same time. That's a red flag, because light bulbs don't usually go out at the same time. But I replaced the bulbs anyway. They still didn't work. So I tested the circuit with a multimeter. The light sockets had ground but no power. So I checked the fusebox. The fuse was good. At that point, I was scratching my head. Maybe a broken wire, or something?
So I used the multimeter to test the wires at different points, to narrow down the bad spot. Now suddenly, there's power at the light sockets! So I reinstalled the light bulbs. They still didn't work. But I have some spares, so I swapped them out. Now the marker lights work.
So WTF happened there? This is my theory. The fuse for the marker lights probably had a bad connection (oxidation?). And I got some faulty light bulbs from the parts store. So when I installed the new (faulty) light bulbs, of course they didn't work. When I removed and reinstalled the fuse, it wiped the corrosion off the contacts, and power was restored. When I replaced the light bulbs the second time, everything was good.
I'm still shaking my head.
Back to Grille Block 2.0. The original idea was to sandwich a piece of plastic between the trim piece and the bumper. But after getting a close look at the area, that won't be feasible. So Instead, I decided to attach the plastic piece to the back of the grille.
In the photo below, we're looking at the inside of the front bumper. You can see the screws that attach the trim piece to the grille. I'm going to use those screws to hold my grille block in place.
Then I used the grille opening as a template for my piece of plastic. Below, you can see the grille block ready to install. I cut it with a utility knife. That notch is for clearance.
And here we have the grille block installed. The back of the grille isn't flat, so there are some gaps. So it's not a 100% grille block, maybe closer to 80%. But that's probably for the better, since I live in Florida.
It was also a perfect time to fix that dent in the bumper. I warmed up the area with a heat gun, and pushed out the dent by hand. It was actually pretty easy.
And last but not least, a photo of the car with its new mods. I think it looks much better! If you look closely, you can see a glint of sunlight reflecting off the grille block. But aside from that, it's pretty stealthy.
It feels good crossing stuff off the to-do list.
