wow.. idnc your trucks looking great, it's always cool to see another blackout.. honestly.. I really liked your chrome setup though, but I think after everythings said and done it will look sweet..

I know weve chatted before, but here's a few more suggestions..

grille - keep the one you have, it looks slick.. can't you have that powdercoated too? what happened to your lower grille? either way, keep the grille you have.. harley grille has too big of gaps, and will still have to be painted.. and saleen is nice, but I'd still rather have yours powdercoated or painted..

tails - did you already buy your HD tails? if not, I would definately reccomend tinting them with nightshades.. the spray and supplies cost less than $15 and you could have them professionally cleared if you wanted a truly factory look for less than $100 I'm sure.. now you don't have to black them out completely, but atleast this way you can get them maybe a little darker and get your 3rd brake light tinted at the same time and same color.. otherwise youd have to buy an aftermarket 3rd light or live with the one you got and it not be quite the same darkness.. I may be wrong, but I dont think there is an HD 3rd brake light.. so yea.. its really not hard at all.. may take you the better half of 2 hours to tint them yourself..

heads - did you decide on trying the ez bake oven method? or are you gonna pick up some aftermarkets? If you decide to open them up, spray a little bit of nightshades over the reflector unless you don't have one.. can't really tell... If you go for aftermarkets, pick up the black headlights on ebay that have the clear side reflector.. it looks like you already have stealth bulbs or something along those lines so your good there..

step bar - I dunno if your planning on blacking out the the step bar, but I did.. mine was chrome like yours and I just unbolted it from the side, masked the plastic, sanded it down a little, primed it, black glossed it, cleared it all with Rustoleum spray paint and mines holding up pretty well for 6 months now.. otherwise just powdercoat it if your wallet allows..

emblems - I guess the emblems would be the last bit of chrome left.. but they arent really chrome, just plastic.. so.. mask them off from the rest of the truck, scuff them up a lil bit, and paint them with some Black Satin Krylon Fusion.. satin is inbetween gloss and flat, and should pop a bit more than sticking with gloss.. you can pick up inlays from Patriotdecals.com to fill in the letters for the side/rear emblems (dark shadow grey inlays) and overlays for the ford oval decals (mine were flat black background, with dark shadow grey letters)... I dunno if your 4x4, but they have nice 4x4 decals too.. you could always do gloss black instead of dark shadow grey to switch things up, but I dunno how much of a contrast they would be on eachother..

hmm.. well yea, that should take care of just about every stinking piece of chrome on your truck, and most of those mods are fairly cheap.. dont forget to paint some of your underbody

anywho.. good luck and post some more pics as you progress!

 

Lookin good brutha

 

looks great

 

Zeruin, thanks for all your input.

Grill: im gunna try and paint mine first, i took off the lower billet in the pics, b/c im gunna experiment with that lil guy first.

Tails : im Anti- Niteshades lol. i hate driving behind ppl , with tinted tails, and i dont like tickets. so for $70 i think im gunna stick with the HD tails

Heads: i have my oringinal set of Heads, im gunna try and paint the whole thing black, not HD Heads, i mean fully black. night vision is highly overrated

Step Bars: one of these days im gunna go with the N-Fab step bars

Emblems : will be last, i ll try the krylon satin as you mention



One other thing : how did you paint all the lil bolt guys on the wheels, do they come off easily?

 

ahh.. gotcha.. well atleast leave the little circles on the headlights chrome.. might not hold up otherwise... but i dunno

I still say give nightshades a try, you can easily recreate the HD look without going too dark, mine are only slightly darker than HD's and light shine's through more than well enough.. just spray multiple light coats and wetsand inbetween for smooth finish, then clear it or get it cleared at a body shop.. either way you get to control how dark it turn by how many coats you put on.. I put about 4 coats and am still legal.. plus you still got the 3rd brake light to worry bout..

might as well give the step bar ya got a few coats of spray and see how that works for you..

Honestly, I wasn't brave enough to see if the bolts came out, but I would assume they would get scratched putting them back in either way... as you can tell, I'm not very afraid of spray paint tho.. so I just masked off all the little circles (took almost 2 hours.. lol) sanded them down a lil, and sprayed up close, giving each a few light coats.. no chipping yet and looks great.. otherwise just buy some touch up paint and paint them on..

btw, what trim is your f150? I'm going to assume XLT or lariat? where did you get your grille and lower grille and what brand is it? Is it interchangeable with the FX4? Does the billet grille come apart from the surround? I'd consider buying it from you if you decide against painting it.. how much did powdercoating the rear bumper cost anyways?

 

those lil bolts look great painted. not sure if i feel like spray painting my new wheels though lol.

I have a lariat. the grill is : Carraiage works replacment grill. i think i got it off autoanything.com . and yes the only thing you keep from your stock grill is the surround.

Make sure you look at the replacment, the bolt overs look like crap Imho

rear bumper cost $150 to powder coat

 

yea... I was a bit hesitant of painting my wheels when I got mine too.. but I think it was well worth it.. It was all or nothing for me.. I'm still debating on whether or not to crack open my headlights again and black out my orange reflector.. lol.. it was such a b*tch the first time around, and I think I might have used super high temp silicone when i resealed.. lol

I think I've seen that CW grille before in black.. isn't it kinda "see through?"

 

yeah more or less, depending on your angle.

i would paint the reflector, but good luck gettin those headlights open again lol

 

heads up.. I think I just fell in love.. lol.. not bad considering people were getting these for $80 shipped on ebay.. I'm gonna see if I can get my hands on one.. its the Roush replacement grille painted with krylon fusion.. a bit bulkier bars and its supposed to come with the emblem clip.. sounds like a plan to me!

 

aww come on man why did u post that lol.

that grill looks awesome

if i remember, on ebay it was like 2 for $140

i think i might get the 2 and fanangle up a lower grill


BTW : sweet truck BallinSTX

 

That looks SICK!!!

 

Rsbeachbum2: thats easy pass

Why do you have your Ez pass on your plate? i live in NJ and mines mounted on the windshield like most of em.

Trucks looks way better now btw..nice job..

 

thanks Tg

idk, i had a choice of on the plate or on the windshield and the plate looks better imho

 

yea.. I'm definately thinking of picking up a pair of those roush grilles.. prolly gonna order tomorrow.. anywho, I've seen a few people managed to mod it for the lower bumper, but no write ups or pics on how to mount it.. have you found any threads showing the mounting from behind the bumper?

 

I made my own lower roush grille from scratch. Couldn't stand the different bar sizes and needed something to fill the hole so the train horns weren't exposed.

Here's a thread I did on the write up,

https://www.f150online.com/forums/ap...sh-grille.html