Have you done this on your previous/other vehicles? What did or do you hope to prevent?
Front Grill Mesh Install?
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I have not done it before on any other vehicle, but I have actually hit a couple of birds before in other vehicles. They can wreak havoc on a radiator. I installed a rhombic ABS black mesh on my 2021 TLX. I like the all blacked out look of the grill now and hopefully it will lessen the amount of road debris, sticks, rocks, etc that are hitting the intercooler and keep leaves and other trash out of there. My car is only two years old and today when I had my front bumper cover off you could really see all the hits that the intercooler has taken. Its nuts that it is that beat up in such a short time.
Now its blacked out and you can’t see the intercooler from a distance anymore.
This is a better view.
Sorry, I didn’t take any other pics during the installation. I drilled really small holes and twist-wired it in with 18 gauge sheathed solid copper wiring in about 10-12 places. All I had onhand was white sheathed wire, so I will have to go back and paint the ones you can see from the outside black. I would recommend using black if anyone does this. I was on a time crunch and I only wanted to pull the bumper cover once, so I was templating/fabricating the front lower splitter, installing the type s front lip, meshing the grill and installing all of my LED lighting in the front grill. The most time consuming part was figuring out all of the sizes for the barrel spacers that go between the upper lip and lower splitter. Barrel spacers prevent the splitter from bending to the contour of the upper lip when you tighten everything up. They range from 1/4” to 1-1/8”. Below is the Amazon link to the ABS mesh that I used:
Amazon.com: AggAuto 47"x16" ABS Plastic Universal Car Grill Mesh, Automotive Grille Insert Bumper Rhombic Hole 10x30mm Grids Black : Automotive
Buy AggAuto 47"x16" ABS Plastic Universal Car Grill Mesh, Automotive Grille Insert Bumper Rhombic Hole 10x30mm Grids Black: Grille Inserts - Amazon.com ✓ FREE DELIVERY possible on eligible purchases
www.amazon.com
I went with the Rhombus 10x30. There are smaller sizes available, but I wanted to make sure that I still had high air flow after installation.
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