EfiniX
Well-known member
When I got my car, the PO had shaved off all of the badges and locks before painting the car some Porsche grey. I'm "meh" on the door locks, but I never liked the fact that the emblems were gone. As it turns out, the emblem on the grill wasn't gone, just covered in bondo and painted over...
...poorly.
Well I finally got it in my head to sort that out and I figured why not update the look a bit. The work was easy enough, as the grill-portion of the housing just comes off with screws on the back. So I pulled the whole thing out, pulled out the grill and cut the stock vanes out, then bent up the best mesh I could find locally. Turns out that metal gutter screens go for about $3 a section, and one section was plenty. As for the housing, I sanded it down, primed it, and put on about 6 coats of a matte black (no way I was going to color match the weird, custom grey paint).
I also restored the emblem, which was the most tedious part of the whole project. The diamonds are a red lacquer that is soft enough to melt a bit under even a very soft buffing wheel. I ended up smoothing it by hand with some very fine wet-sanding.
Of course it wasn't until I put it back on that I noticed that the passenger-side mounting bracket is pushed back just a touch. No matter as I'll fix that when I build and install air shields for my radiator to keep air from flowing around the sides.
Before:
After:
...poorly.
Well I finally got it in my head to sort that out and I figured why not update the look a bit. The work was easy enough, as the grill-portion of the housing just comes off with screws on the back. So I pulled the whole thing out, pulled out the grill and cut the stock vanes out, then bent up the best mesh I could find locally. Turns out that metal gutter screens go for about $3 a section, and one section was plenty. As for the housing, I sanded it down, primed it, and put on about 6 coats of a matte black (no way I was going to color match the weird, custom grey paint).
I also restored the emblem, which was the most tedious part of the whole project. The diamonds are a red lacquer that is soft enough to melt a bit under even a very soft buffing wheel. I ended up smoothing it by hand with some very fine wet-sanding.
Of course it wasn't until I put it back on that I noticed that the passenger-side mounting bracket is pushed back just a touch. No matter as I'll fix that when I build and install air shields for my radiator to keep air from flowing around the sides.
Before:
After:
