vizi0n's custom grill how-to

First of all, you will need the following items (or similar) to complete the taks:

  • Your OEM grill (... no really?)
  • Dremel or some kind of rotary tool with cutting discs and sanding tip
  • Eye protection (glasses)
  • Cutters
  • Mesh grill (or whatever you want to put instead of the bee nest thing)
  • Bondo/putty
  • Sandpaper (220 + 400 + 600)
  • Primer
  • Paint
  • Something to glue the grill to the plastic trim (I've used some black Permatex gasket maker)

First of all, here is my grill

To remove the P badge I've used a videoclub card that I've slid under the badge.
Make sure you do it carefully, the badge has 2 straight pins (see holes below)

This was just a test... and no, I really needed another grill :)

I've used my big cutters to remove the bee nest type of grill and finished the edges using
the sanding tip as you can see on the photo

Then I've cut myself a grill from the leftovers I had. This specific mesh grill was bought on eBay from cc_detailing for cheap, and it is great stuff

Here's what it looks from the front and that's not quite what I wanted, so onto the next step

My first butcher act on my Pulsar body ... I've (grossly) cut out the center piece using cutting disc on my Dremel

Then I've cut some more of the edges so that it's not curved towards the inside anywhere using bot cutting disc and sanding tip because some areas were harder to work with the cutting disc

Here's a test fit with the grill

Now the "hard" part ...
I've used some leftovers of my grill as "main filling" parts for the top and bottom parts that
were cut out so that my Bondo can stick to something

Here we can see the (somewhat sloppy) Bondo job (I've re-done it later)
Make sure that you spread the Bondo alot, let it dry enough (I've let it dry overnight) and then
sand with 220 grit paper first to remove the most of the unnecessary Bondo, then use some 400 to
get it to finish smooth with the plastic

Next step, when it's all done, primer! I've sprayed 2 coats of sandable primer and sanded with 600 grit in between coats after about an hour of drying

Painting was next, 2 coats of gloss black Tremclad spray paint matches my body quite well, luckyly!

Here's what it looks from an angle view

From the front

With the GTI-R badge

With the GTI-R badge again

The 2 parts of the process that are not pictured are:

  1. painting of the grill using flat black spray paint ... pretty much self explanatory
  2. glueing the mesh grill in place. I've just put the grill on the plastic when flipped face down, and then spread some gasket maker on the edges. Let it dried for about 2-3 hours and then put it on the car. After a test drive to make sure it was holding good, I've glued the badge using the same stuff and it sticks very well!

By the way, there is a little gap on the side grills (OEM) that I did not care to re-do in the center part where I've used Bondo. That's up to you to decide if you wanna do It like that or not, or maybe even better, smoothen all the gap ... haven't done that myself :)

Hope that helped any of you that were unsure on how to do this.