so i ordered the main and bumper grilles from precision billet grilles last week. they showed up yesterday and i was stoked to go to my buddies shop after i got off work to put them in.

the bumper grille went in no problem and took all of about 5mins. thats to be expected though seeing as how it basically just clips in the same place as the license plate bracket. of course they forgot to provide the hardware for that grille so i had to use some extra nuts/bolts/washer we had at the shop.

and now for the main grille. what a complete pain in the *** and all around terribly engineered design. lets start with the fact that they shipped it in the absolute weakest junk *** box you can find with nothing but some paper in it for protection. so of course it got smashed to hell during shipping and bent some of the bars. we straightened them out and you cant tell now but if they just put some damn bubble wrap in there this could have been avoided and i think for the money they charge they can afford it.

so we get the stock grille and shell out and cut the grille away from the shell. this is no problem, we just used an air saw then a sanding wheel for an extra clean look even though you cant really see the area you cut out after installing the billet grille.

now the problem is that the grille was no where near the contour of the stock grille so we had to bend the entire structure back and forth until we got it to fit in the shell where it was flush. the next problem we encountered was the mounting brackets. there are 4 on the top and 4 on the bottom. the outside two on the top and bottom work with little to no modification but the center two top and bottom are no where close to where they are supposed to be. there is nothing to bolt them to. the plastic tabs that we left in tact when we cut out the stock shell were about 1/2 inch too short to bolt the metal grille tabs in. we ended up having to fab our own metal bracket in order to get the top two center mounts bolted in. the bottom two center tabs just ended up where we could wedge the bolt through to hold it tight against the metal frame on the truck after all the other tabs were bolted in place.

all in all, fours hours later, the grilles look amazing in the truck. i am glad i ended up with 28 bars rather than 18 from carriage works and the polished finish looks great in contrast to my gray paint. i am super happy with the finished product but the manner in which we had to achieve this result was ridiculous. its like whomever designed the main grille did so from a picture of our truck with no actual vehicle to use as a mock up. that combined with the terrible packaging and lack of hardware for the bumper grille will definitely make me think twice about buying my next grille from precision. if you can find a grill that is already connected to a grille shell that will save you a ton of head aches. you can simply pop the old assembly off and replace it with the new one. perhaps i should design such a billet grille.

ill throw pics up in here tonight when i get home and also in my mod thread. rant over. lol

 

Customizing is not always easy...otherwise everyone would have a sweet vehicle! I installed the same grille on mine. It def took some fiddling, but when you look at the final product, its not a flat grille, it has to bow with the front of the truck, i think it fit great....took about 60 mins to install the main grille for me

 

heres a few crappy cell pics i took at lunch. ill take some with my real camera tonight and put them in my mod thread. i do love the way they look.

 

That looks pretty stricgt- most are junk you are right!!!!!!!!!!! I have custom built more than a few for friends...cheaper, easier, custom and fit the first time!

 

I bet the fight was worth it though because that looks awsome!

 

thanks guys. yeah, it was worth it. i dont mind the work. i was mainly just bitching about the poor design and the way the product was packaged and missing hardware. im over it now. lol

 

All that work looks like it was worth it. The truck looks awesome!

 

looks great

 

I didn't realize how big the grille area on the new F-150's were, it looks awesome with the billet grille!

 

If they were still doing episodes of pimp my ride they'd probably try to put a flat screen in the grille.

 

thanks fellas.

 

Great job and an awesome looking truck!

 

thanks man!

 

has anyone tried the ebay grilles for about half the price? i wonder if their any different? or has anyone tried another brand?