My Badgeless Grille Odyssey

[wankular]

I bought this from Street Unit, but you can also get them from Speedline since they're the same. I opted for unpainted because I figured how hard could this be to paint? And it's $100 cheaper unpainted. So after a couple months waiting, and receiving an MS6 grille accidentally, it finally arrived.











Looks good, and tasty, too.



The description said "ready to paint" but the black finish left fingerprints so I figured it would be best to sand the crap out of it and primer it myself.



And here it is primered and sanded with 1000 grit.



I have 1/3 can of metro gray paint left and I might start on it tonight if there's enough daylight left when I get home. I have another can of paint coming from Touch Up Paint from PaintScratch.com.

Stay tuned for bumper cutting.......

[irishking03]

nicely done.

[WorstEpEver]

subbed. Staying tuned

[08.5MS3]

Looks good man! This is a bolt-on piece with no modification to the bumper, correct?

I've been eyeing the carbon fiber one.

[wankular]

Originally Posted by 08.5MS3 Looks good man! This is a bolt-on piece with no modification to the bumper, correct? I've been eyeing the carbon fiber one.

You have to irreversibly modify (cut) the stock bumper. It's not like the MS6 where you just bolt it on. That horizontal part of the grill with the emblem, you have to cut that whole section out.

[Nazarite]

Originally Posted by wankular You have to irreversibly modify (cut) the stock bumper. It's not like the MS6 where you just bolt it on. That horizontal part of the grill with the emblem, you have to cut that whole section out.

And that's the reason I haven't done this.

[AZSPEED3]

Wow, never thought the grill would come in. Great to see you finally got it Frank. Will be following your thread. Looking into doing this soon, just was a little worried about fucking up my bumper. What are going to use to cut the bumper? Also what do you use to keep the grill in place?

[4G63]

Your dog is a pic whore lol. Subbed for results love that grill this is gonna look sick

[wankular]

One of the reasons I got it unpainted was so I would have some time to reconsider.

[wankular]

This is after a few coats of paint last night and a little sanding to even out the metallic metro gayness.



I ran out of paint so I'll have to wait until the new stuff comes in. I suspect my apartment manager is holding it hostage.

Originally Posted by AdrenalineRush Your dog is a pic whore lol. Subbed for results love that grill this is gonna look sick

Yeah she's territorial and gets pissed if something encroaches her foot of the bed.

[wankular]

So here it is after painting, sanding and clear coat. I'm going to buff it tomorrow night and then prepare to throw it on, maybe Labor Day weekend when I do my meth. I'm actually surprised that it matches so well. I was too lazy to check the darkness against the rest of the car until I was finished.

...nice work...

Hope you are going to post pics of the "snip & clip" alteration of the stock bumper...

[wankular]

I will definitely take pictures every step.

[I gotthatzumzum]

Can't wait to see how this turns out... I hate the front emblem because it always gets rock chips...

[wankular]

I'm doing it Saturday. I swear. Two months of farting around seems about right.

[byau]

been like two months. any updated pics on this?

EDIT: dang you posted before i refreshed/posted. can't wait to see pics

[karl-hungus]

i just found this thread and want to do this too. proceed with the bris.

[wankular]

Did some work on this yesterday. I removed a bunch of plastic shit from behind the grille. This thing was kind of a bitch. Tugging and tugging and then realize, oh there's another screw there.



Here is a closeup with the clips and screws indicated. This is the backside of the passenger side but it's symmetrical.



Remove all the screws and the badge and then wrestle the whole piece out. The plastic piece at the bottom with the 2 screws and 2 clips can come out first. The three poppers at the top are weird in that you push in that little circle and it pops out.

I also enlarged all of the holes on the new grille. Word of advice - Do this before you paint it. Mine is still good but it made me nervous as hell drilling out those top intercooler scoop holes, waiting for the paint to chip.

Hoping to cut tonight or Friday.

[BillsFan]

Sub'd

[jack_hammer]

i would really like to do this, but have not even gotten as far as to order the parts.

[mike000g]

i have done this to my ms3 but without the street unit grlle.the hardest part was getting the plastic piece behind the grille to fit.i didn't wanna sacrifice the scoops that connect to the grille.i was left with no choice but to cut the plastic m where the emblem connects.so im sure wankular is going to hit a speed bump with this as well.there more cutting involved then what you think.but good luck.

[wankular]

I'm not planning on putting that big plastic piece back on. There are holes in the new grille for attaching the IC scoops. Those two weird pieces at the bottom are supposed to go back on but I might not put those on either. The holes in the new grille are too small and I don't want to crack it. Maybe zipties.

[TRex]

bump! @wankular

[wankular]

Problem is there is only about an hour of daylight when I get home. I did spend some time trimming the corners of the IC scoops so they fit a little better.

Tomorrow I'm going to cut that fucker.

[TRex]

awesome...really interested in doing this...but i will let you be the test subject first haha

[wankular]

First off, let me begin by saying Fuck MS6 owners and their “remove two bolts and you have a new grille”.

On to the carnage. Excuse the dirty car. It was a lot easier to cut a filthy car than a nice clean one.

I thought I would be able to only cut the emblem part and slide the new grille over the old part.



No dice. So I kept cutting.



Basically trying to cut the least amount of material. Soon realized that whole piece had to come out.



There was a plastic threaded hole right at the bottom where I was cutting but I was using a hacksaw blade on a regular handle so I was able to flex and turn the blade as I was cutting.

Here is the car with the gaping mouth.



I attached the grille only using the top two bolts and none of the stock plastic parts. And realized there was a gap at the bottom big enough to fit my hand and it flopped up and down.

Here is where I started to feel a little weak in the knees.



The new grille has two tabs at the bottom of each side so I attached the plastic pieces which act as kind of a compression device within the bumper.

The rear:



Front:



I used wood screws threaded right into the grille. Set the grille in place and notice where those plastic pieces fit in the bumper because you’ll have to take them back off and screw the grille to them after they’re already in place in the bumper. You can't weasel those pieces in there while they're attached.

Here we are after that step. I was overjoyed to realize the grille was tightening up to the bumper as I tightened those screws, removing that floppy gap I had earlier.



Here is the gap on the passenger side (there's one on the driver side too) I don’t think there is any way around this. I cut the absolute minimum required to fit the grille in. It's not so bad on a dark car but it might be more noticeable on white or silver.



After all that I knew there was no way the intercooler scoops were going to line up.




I should be able to dremel the holes a little bigger tonight.
Here are a few shots of the finished product.





And all I had to cut out.



FINAL IMPRESSIONS:
I like the look of this but Speedline didn’t do a great job of molding it. Everything was tough to line up. I also would have liked them to make it out of plastic or urethane. The fiberglass is a little too stiff and brittle. I’m hoping I don’t go over a pothole and crack it all to shit. There is a lot of stress on those small tabs at the bottom. I’m hoping my paintjob holds up. It came with 3M tape but I didn't use it in case I need to pull it off to repaint or fix anything. If I were to do this again I would cut and test fit everything before painting it. That is Body Shop 101.

[AZSPEED3]

First, love the new avaitar with the kid and the cat, lol. Also looks great Frank. I have been waiting forever to see how this turned out. Must say I'm impressed, looks awesome.
Thanks for the indepth pics and review.

[TRex]

thanks again wank

after seeing what was invovled i don't think im going to go through with it lol....it looks good but for some reason to me without the badge piece there the spacing between the fins just seems HUGE....but it is very unique and certainly gives it a completely different style

[wankular]

Thanks Austin. I ran into all the same problems as Bioevolve when he did it. Along with the shaved hatch the only way an outsider would know this was an MS3 is from the mazdaspeedforums stickers on the side windows. I even took off the centercaps. Don't know why I did all that. I dig it.

Trex, yeah I'm hoping the scoops will hide some of the hood release mechanism. It would be nice to be able to swap grilles back and forth.

It is weird pulling the hood latch and you can put your whole arm in there.

[jack_hammer]

looks good. what did you use to do the cutting?

[wankular]

Originally Posted by broncojd78 looks good. what did you use to do the cutting?

I used this.
The bumper was pretty easy to cut. I could bend it back while sawing, like carving a turkey.

[karl-hungus]

Originally Posted by wankular like carving a turkey.

so another cutting option then?



looks great, wank.

[wankular]

Here are a few pics of how much I had to enlarge the IC scoop holes. I didn't want to stress the fiberglass any more than I had to. Looking back I should have measured and cut the grille holes instead of the scoop holes.

These pictures are about 3 weeks old and everything is still holding up.

[jack_hammer]

Originally Posted by wankular Here are a few pics of how much I had to enlarge the IC scoop holes. I didn't want to stress the fiberglass any more than I had to. Looking back I should have measured and cut the grille holes instead of the scoop holes.

why? i can't imagine one would function better than the other.

[wankular]

True, but it looks a little shittier the way I did it.

[jack_hammer]

Gotcha

Sent from my LG-MS690 using Tapatalk

[Dash08]

Nice job, man.

Looks good.

Did you really shoot that with a spray can? You must have wet sanded the fuck out of it.

[wankular]

Originally Posted by Dash08 Nice job, man. Looks good. Did you really shoot that with a spray can? You must have wet sanded the fuck out of it.

I didn't really wetsand it too much. Mostly sanding with 1000 & 2000 grit after each coat. And then a lot of clearcoat and rubbing compound. But yes, spray can on my dusty ass balcony. It's probably the only thing I've painted that didn't come out orange peely.

[dacrowshadow]

Nice I'm thinking of doing this...

[jeremy.peterson]

I found this very helpful and it has re motivated me to pick up the badgeless grille. Very nice write up, thanks man!