the thing is a pain in teh **** to get seperated from the surround. I think I broke most every clip there is and I cant even get the stock one off the truck. This thing is kicking my butt not to mention the thing is plastic. WTF? Any help?

 

almost every grille ive done ive broken a few clips, you do know that the clips for the surround are held in by lock tabs on the grille, youll have to bend or break the lock tabs to loosen the surround clips. I just did a HD grille on my own truck yesterday, and even after doing about 7 or 8 of these grilles, its just a PITA. did you remove the black tape on the top and get those 5 clips?

 

Yea those lock tabs on the grill i bent them and they broke. They werent supposed to break right? I have the HD grill out of the surround but the most trouble is coming from the stock one.

 

Dad and I talked it as a team, one held the lock tapbs As I did the others. Only broke maybe 2 tabs total.

 

My advice is bring it inside and let it sit for a couple of hours, make sure it is good and warm, this will make the plastic more pliable (maybe even use a heatgun as you go along). Than it looks like coming in from the front with a tiny flat bar and pry the tabs just far enough to clear the grille would work best. When we did mine we did so from the back and broke probably 3 or 4 tabs. It is a pain in the rear, but just take your time and don't push anything too hard. I had the honeycomb gille and it looks sooooooo much better with the HD, glad I got mine before this price jump.

 

two sets of hands definitely helps a lot. my buddy and i just took our time and managed to only break 3 tabs between the 2 grilles. try using a flathead screw driver to push hard against the tabs while the other person pulls the two pieces apart. push hard against the corner of each tab and then the other corner. this will start to loosen them up a bit. good luck.

 

Sounds like a lot of trouble just to install a piece of plastic with some chrome paint. Good luck with the rest of the job. I hope you get it in without breaking every tab. That could really get expensive!

 

its ok if you broke some tabs, all they do is lock the regular clip in. the regular clips will hold ok without the lock tabs, so dont beat yourself up if you break a few

 

I just did this this week. I used every tiny screwdriver I had to wedge in there, and work my way around. The Har...I mean Flight grille was relatively easy. I didn't break a tab. On my Lariat grille I broke two or three. It was alot harder.