-FROG-

One of the guys on here posted that he took his lower bumper grill off and I always thought about doing it to my car over the years. I finally got around to looking at my car and experimenting last weekend and here are the result. It's amazing what removing a stock grill, a pocket knife and can of aluminum spray paint can do.

I'll attach a before and after pic. A few days later, I even relocated the horns (from back behind the fog lights) to allow better flow to the radiator since the horns were blocking a good 15% or more of air flow. I also painted behind the fog light grill when I had it off but don't have any pitures since I did that. Not really that noticable anyway since the grill kinda hides it. Anyhoo, sure cleaned up the car and opened up some better air flow, and looks GREAT going down the road!

Dysan

Looks good!!!!

azoufan

So you just painted that silver? I've seen some other Mustangs that looked like that and I always liked it. Not sure it would look good on my car since it's all black, but I've always thought about it. Can you tell me what you painted?

TexaStang

So I'm curious too, what exactly was painted and how did you remove the front lower grill apparatus with a pocket knife? Looks great though! I need to figure out a way to clean my radiator of nasty bugs on the same note. I have a chinspoiler, so no lower grill would look sorta weird. Yours looks great though!

-FROG-

FIRST OFF.... IF ANYONE DOES THIS, DO ME A FAVOR AND CHECK YOUR TEMPERATURE GUAGE AND REMEMBER WHERE IT HANGS OUT AT! I THINK MY CAR IS RUNNING A TAD BIT COOLER DUE TO MORE AIR FLOW, SO SEE IF YOU CAN SEE ANY RESULTS.


I think the lower grills make the stangs look too "plasticie", like a Grand Am or something..... I think it would look good on any car. Heck, pull it off and get a look for it and pop it back on if you like it better on. The plastic was soft and durable enough so it didn't seem like anything was going to break or anything.

How to remove it: (See tabs diagram below)
I started on the driver side and felt around. My car is lowered, but it was still pretty easy. There are about 2 or 4 clips on that side holding the grill in the plastic bumper. It's a little painful pushing with your finger tips and pulling on sharp edged plastic, but you will figure it out. I only used my fingers so you shouldn't need a screwdriver or anyhting, just pull hard. Press from the back and try to wedge your fingers in the front portion so you can also pull from the front. Once you have a grip on the front, you can push on the tabs / clips that are holding the grill in place and pry on them a bit up and down till they pop out. I don't remember any tabs in the center area, only on the left and right sides of the grill. The grill should eventually pop out on the side and then you can do the same on the passenger side.

Cutting the bumper:
Now you will see a square type area on each vent hole (left and right) of the bumper. I was thinking about using small wire cutters or Dykes to cut away and then I realized the plastic was soft enough for a sharp pocket knife to take care of it. At first I started slicing through the square shaped piece, but then I realized it's better and safer to cut on the sections gradually. I mean by slidng the knife tip along the line where you want to cut and do it over and over. Eventually it will start to eat it's way through the bumper and the lines will be nice and contour to the origional bumper holes. There will be a few little spots where you can see where the origional square pieces were, but it's so small nobody will notice and it obviousely doesn't show in my closeup picture.

Cleaning and painting:
Now you can see your A/C Condensor better and also see how much you opened up the air flow for better cooling on the radiator and engine are in general. Take a small knife or flat head screwdriver and fix any bent cooling blades on the condensor and scrape out any bugs. BE GENTLE!!!! Also, there will be small pebbles in between some of the blades so pick those out too. Spend about 10 or 15 minutes cleaning it up and fixing the blades. Take your time... You will notice a few chrome oil lines crossing in front of the condensor (must be for oil or something). I took some Acitone and cleaned them up real good but a damp cloth or some WD40 on a rag may help clean them up. Try to bend them straight if they are crooked. Take some tape and tape over the chrome lines and shove newspaper in spots you don't want to paint. I slid a few sheets under the condensor and covered the bottom area of the bumper and shoved newspaper in the sides without using any tape to hold it. Also wrap a few sheets around the 3 vertical bars on the front of the bumper so you don't get paint on them. Now use some high temp aluminum paint the condensor. Paint inside the condensor blades pretty good, but don't cake it in there. Shoot from straight on and left and right angles. I also painted the bottom of my window washer container black so it wouldn't stand out.

Now the car has an "intercooler" look and just looks all round cooler like it has more mods and not so stock. Like I mentioned earlier, I also took off my fog light grill (which removes like the lower grill) and relocated my horns (over on the drivers side front area) for better air flow and painted that area as well (no picture though, sorry). If you do this to your car, post the pics so we can see how it looks! Take a before and after pic!
-Paul

mrkabc

I'd be worried about rocks and road debris trashing my condensor / radiator since there is no more plastic protecting them.

Good job on your mod but I think I will pass IMHO...

-FROG-

The 2 holes in the center area already expose the condensor. There never was anything protecting it. The only thing changed is there is air flow around the sides now. The reason the condensor looks so obvious now is because I painted it silver and the sides are now revealed. Open up both pictures I attached in the first post and compair them side by side to see what I am talking about (the 2 center holes are full cutouts basically on stock). Good observation, but mo more harm can come to the condensor than what could have from stock.

Boltzman

Have you seen the roush fascia? it has a huge opening,so I don't think they would design it that way if there was going to be a problem

05blackV6

Hey Frog you have exactly what I want!!! A 2005 Mustang, which I have, and a Dodge Viper. Lucky devil!!!!!

Looks sweet man.

-FROG-

Not so much luck.... I have worked and invested for my toys. I started out with a yellow station wagon in high school. Thanks though!

MTAS

The overall mod looks really good, nice job! However I'm more interested in the relocating of the horns. Can you post a pic of where you put them, and any additional info that would help to move them? Thanks!

-FROG-

I don't have any pics of that but you should be able to figure it out with a little instruction. First off, you need to remove the top plastic piece that covers your radaitor top. 6 "push in" type plastic fasteners hold it in position. I used my fingernails and dykes/wirecutters to gently pull up and pop them out. Should be pretty obvious, but pull up the cinter circle area and then you can pull out the whole fastner from the outside circle area.

Then remove the fog light grill. Unplug the fog light wires and gently press out on the tabs on the outer most part of the grill. 2 on each outside and 2 in the bottom area near the bumper. It will gradually pop out with a little force. It was pretty easy to do, just be gentle.

Remove the stock horns. You may be able to unplug the horn wire here or you can remove the 2 bolts holding the horn bracket. They are located on the top, under that plastic radiator cover piece you took off earlier. It's obvious. Remove the horns from the mounting bracket too, so the horns are free and the mounting screw is accessable (you'll see what I'm talking about just unbolt all the horn stuff).

Remounting/relocating the horns. Jack up the car and ALWAYS put a jack stand or two under it. I have heard and seen friends where cars have fell on them. USE JACK STANDS! Crawl under the drivers side of the car. Laying on your back, look up and see a flat bar type area where the body is spot welded together. It may be considered part of the frame, but there is an area where there is already a hole to mount one horn. It may not be too obvious, so run your fingers around there and feel for it. It's a perfect hole for 1 horn to mount. This will allow the horn to be mounted in basically the same type positioning as it was origionally (vertical from the ground), but it will be turned as parallel to the car, instead of perpendicular. You will need to drill one hole for the other horn (wear safety goggles so you don't get metal in your eyes). Just mount it near the other horn in an obvious manner. The origional mounting bolts will work that came off the horns.

Extent the wire and plug the horns in. I ran the wire in between the radiator and condensor. I used some black wire loom for a little extra protection from heat.

This is not rocket science. Anyone with any sort of common sense can achieve this. It just takes a little time looking at what you have to work with, then deciding on a good method for relocating it. Don't worry about breaking anything since there's really nothing to break unless you force it to be broken.

2005GTDELUXE

Looks great on your car IMO

05GT-O.C.D.

I agree it does look very good, but I'd be concerned about the paint. They make special high-temp paint with very low build-up for painting radiators/condensors and I've only seen it in black. I would go as sparringly as possible on the silver paint and would limit it to two light coats.
My .02, looks good.

GRAYPNY

A racoon will fit very nicely in that opening! I think I'll pass too.

-FROG-

like I said earlier..... YOUR CAR IS ALREADY OPEN IN THE CENTER! There is absolutely no gain in the center. The only gain is, it is now open on the sides. Look closely at the before and after picture side by side and see there is no difference in the 2 middle holes. Only the 2 sides are open to allow flow. Why do people look and say the opening is too big when I never changed the size of the openings? The reason it looks bigger is because you can now see through the sides and also see the condensor. Optical illusion I guess...

Come on guys, what do you think people do with intercoolers? Maybe some of you are kinda new to this type of stuff.... Take a look at my friends turbo mustang and low 11 second turbo civic and also the Cobra and other high end stangs. Nobody around here talks about hitting coons and having rocks flying into your grill so I'm not sure I'm following where some of you are coming from?

As far as the paint goes... I'm not sure what you mean by "build up", unless you are talking about the paint caking into the cooling blades? I can see that if you use an entire can of paint, but not a problem in what I experienced. As a matter of fact, the A/C blows just as cold, if not colder than it has always done and it has been well into the 100's around here in Texas. My temp guage is also slightly tilted to the left instead if straight up and down, so I think the car is cooling off a little better too, but it's not by much. If anything, I just got rid of all that dam plastic that looks cheep and factory.

LOL! Someone oughtta tell Shelby to put a smaller grill on so he doesn't get anything hung in there.....

05GT-O.C.D.

Hopefully the paint will hold up for you over time. I was just cautioning others who might get carried away. I did a similar mod to mine.

MTAS

Here's where I ended up putting my horns: