As I said before, I've seen one up close and it looked fine. The car was redfire and I saw nothing objectionable about the overhang, it isn't noticable. I think those of you complaining about it either haven't actually seen one or perhaps saw one that was installed poorly.

 

Why not just pare back the plastic? Can't it just be trimmed to match the V6 mouth? I mean... if someone can do this smoothly, they could make a TON of cash. It would still need shimming of the hood latch and all, but... think about it. You shave that back and you don't have the overhang. that's the biggest reason most folks have for NOT wanting to do the kit.

I saw a few this weekend, and... it wasn't TOO bad, but it does come to a point where the stock one doesn't. If I knew... it would bother me. If not... I suppose I'd never notice. I'm a perfectionist though... kind of.... all or nothing, so to speak.

 

The V6 grille does come to a point, too, just not as far out... but that's because the bumpers are different on the V6 and the GT. If you look at the V6 bumper, it raises up in the back to the grille. The GT bumper is flat all the way back, that is why the grille is taller.

 

Tres,

I can't wait to see the pics dude... When you going to do this? This coming weekend? Take lots of pics!! Oh...and that great tutorial you did on dual exhaust...uh...HINT HINT...

 

Tres,

You get that thing on yet!! I'm waiting patiently!

 

Sorry for the delay guys, but the thing just arrived today! First lesson is ordering from this seller requires patience (which I don't have a lot of ). It just got here a few minutes ago and it only took two badgering emails to get him to finally ship it Anyway, here are my initial observations:

- It's packed well. Not a lot of padding, but enough to get it here safely barring the mailman backing over it or something.

- Fogs are already installed in the grille, that'll save a little bit of time.

- Instructions look quite good and are printed in color.

- Wiring harness looks fantastic; all terminations are made, there is an inline fuse, it is wrapped in a nice ribbed plastic jacket and it looks factory all the way.

- The dash switch is a factory V6 headlight switch that has a toggle switch added to it. Looks very clean and factory-like. It has an LED on it so you can check to see if the lights are on or not.

- The "custom modifications" to the grille to get it to fit the V6 appears to consist exclusively of cutting off the bottom tabs from the GT grille (and rather crudely at that). Gee, I think I could have done that myself. Still looks to be a good deal for what is included though.

Unfortunately we are about to head out of town, so the installation will have to wait. Hopefully I can spend some "quality time" with it tomorrow evening though

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Thanx for the update Tres...

That switch does look good. Good luck with 'er!!

 

Awesome, I can't wait for those install pics

 

I was just checking Ebay, and this one seems just as good. The pictures they have convinced me.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/2005-Ford-M...1QQcmdZViewItem
Now I can't wait to see your's, Tres!

Here are a couple that they had, they look great imo.

 

That looks like the best one so far. I wanna order that right now. =(

 

I wish I could see one of these in person. Those look good. What happens if you end up swapping the front bumper to the V8 bumper? Does that fix the overlap issue?

 

Brandon,

I think it will totally fix the overlap issue. I know some folks have order the front end from cascotech (look on ebay). However, they then have to get some stuff to fix the gap in the wheel wells as the gt bumper is different that the stock v6 wheel wells.

 

Manny, I don't know what they did, but those pics look like their grille fits a zillion times better than the one I just installed! I'm about to start uploading pics, it takes a while on dialup. Let me just say right now that the grille kit I have is NOT for the uninitiated. It is a real job to get the thing installed and wired up. I was amazed at how difficult it was. More info in a few....

 

OK, first off, here's a pic of one of the clips they cut off. As I mentioned before, they crudely hacked off the bottom grille clips to allow the grille to fit (supposedly) into the opening. It looks like they used wire cutters or something. I didn't want to chance scratching my bumper installing this grille, so I ground all these off flush and hit it with some sandpaper to smooth it.
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What I should have done first is read through all the instrux. Then I would have noticed page 4 was missing before I started the project- ARGH! I emailed the seller for page 4 (harness routing) and moved on to the grille installation while waiting for his email.
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The instructions make it quite clear that the grille installation in the bumper opening is very difficult. I would go further and say it is impossible the way they describe it. You are supposed to remove the upper bumper bolts and move the bumper mask forward, then snap in one side of the bumper, then the other. It simply isn't possible. The last clip absolutely would not come close to snapping in, the grille is far too tight of a fit. I slathered on dishwashing liquid as they recommended and followed the procedure described, but it wasn't even close to fitting. Luckily I had read someone else's suggestion here to make relief cuts at the lower corner of the grille (in the bumper) and I did just that (shown in pic below, but hard to make out). That did the trick. It was still a tight squeeze to get it in, but it did finally snap in.
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While jacking with the grille, the seller did email me the missing instruction page. The harness gets routed along the firewall under the hood and penetrates through next to the brake master cylinder. The kit comes with a switch that replaces the stock headlight switch. It's easy to reach behind and push the stock one out, then you hook up the new wires and pop it back in. The existing light rheostat is reused from the old switch.
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Switch snapped back in place...
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Now came the really hard part. I hooked up the wiring as suggested- straight to the battery! I didn't like it when I did it, and I especially didn't like it when I realized the friggin' lights can be turned on or left on even if the car is off because it's wired direct! Picture this, you're out cruising with your headlights and fogs on(lookin' cool) and you and your significant other decide to go to a movie. You pull up and park, go to get out of your car and -ding ding ding- thank goodness the headlight alarm reminds you your lights are on. You turn them off, head in and enjoy the movie. You come out and climb in your ride only to discover it won't start, DOH! That's right, the fogs were still on. I can see that happening to me easy! So I got out my current tester and found a hot tap in the fuse panel behind the passenger side kick panel. I started by modifying a fuse by grinding the plastic from one side to expose the metal:
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I soldered a lead to the exposed part of the metal:
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This allowed me to plug the fuse into the panel. The pin that the wire is soldered to is plugged into the hot side of an unused port. So the fuse isn't acting as a fuse (there's already an inline fuse in the harness that comes with the lights), it's just a hot tap.
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I removed the rear inner fender (this can be done without removing the wheel/ tire) and routed the wire up through an existing grommet hole on the passenger side footwell:
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This is a view inside the wheelwell with the inner fender removed, I routed the wire through the grommet and through an existing hold in the fenderwell:
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Then I ran it up next to the battery and soldered it to the positive lead in the harness that was supposed to hood to the battery terminal, then heat-shrinked it. I bolted the negative from the wiring harness to an existing bolt on one of the metal inner fenders. No pic of this step.

 

Clearly I need to wash under the hood, yuck! Looks worse here than it is. This is the custom hood latch kit they say they provide with the kit. Look like the stock one? That's because it is. Their "kit" consists of 4 washers that get installed between the stock latch and the hood. There are also 4 rubber bumpers that are supposed to keep the hood from chafing the radiator shroud or vise versa. I was worried that the hood would stick up higher with these washers, but surprisingly it looks completely normal in the closed position. Isn't any harder or easier to close than before either, seems about the same.
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Done! Before:
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After:
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Well the finished product looks nice but that is clearly not the kit to buy! Thanks for posting the info and pics.

 

I know a lot of you are concerned about fitment, and I have to admit that with this kit the concerns are valid. The bottom of the grille stuck out quite far before I made the relief cuts, that helped but it still stick out a bit. It's not the kind of thing that joe blow off the streets will notice, but if you have a light colored car it would probably bug you when you're up close and personal with it (NOT THAT, I meant washing it! ) I tried to take the most unflattering pictures possible to show you these alignment issues. In this first pic you can see the front does overhang the bumper a bit, about 1/4" at the center. It is aligned at the two sides, but overhangs at the center.
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This was a surprise to me, it doesn't align at the sides either! Notice that the grille and bumper mask are aligned at the bottom of the grille, but there is about 1/4" space at the top. At first I thought the bumper had come unclipped, but everything was still secure. Not noticeable on my black car so much, but imagine on a yellow or white car.
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In this picture you can see that not only does the grille overhang slightly in the middle, but there is also a gap between the grille and bumper.
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