I've never heard of anyone doing this before, so I thought I'd post it up. I wanted something dark - like the Ralliart grille. Except I wasn't going to pay the exorbitant cost of a Ralliart grille, and I wasn't going to try to mod mine with mesh :)

Not much to it. Took the grille out, gave it an incredibly light sand, painted it with a matt black spraycan and topped it off with a clear coat. I would have preferred it to come out darker (like the Ralliarts), but meh. It cost me $6 for spraypaint and sandpaper from Supercheap. The prepping and painting took less than 45mins :doubt: So while it's a very subtle mod, it's also cheap - I'd definitely do it again.

First two pics are befores (just in case you forgot what a TJ Grille looked like lol), the next three are afters.

? I cant spot anything lol

so you painted your black grill blacker??:nuts:
or maybe im missing it just like gas head.

couldn't see it myself either, perhaps a close up view or a real life view of it would be different.
i'm sure you'll see the difference and it would look better in real life as the clear coat would add some gloss to an otherwise non glossy stock grill...

so you painted your black grill blacker??:nuts:

Well, yeah, I guess. The grille was a dark grey beforehand, not a black black.

I've added a better before and after. Like I said, it's as subtle as ****, but for $6 and 45mins, I'm quite happy with it to be honest. Although if I see a Ralliart grille for cheap I'll snap it up :)

Also my mum came in while I was making this picture, and she spotted the difference straight up, so at least it's not just my eyes playing tricks on me lol

which is the before :P

Sweet... I like to paint black things... black... too..


... lol

Sweet... I like to paint black things... black... too..


... lol

lol smartass.

at the start i couldnt really tell the diff, but yeah in that last one it does look a little blacker yerp.

Well I can see the difference, maybe most of you just have pos monitors with crap colour reproduction where as I have a good monitor :P

Its definitely a subtle mod, but for what it costs, I do think it improves the front end ever so slightly. I would almost say it makes the car look slightly more aggressive. I bet it looks better in the sunlight, as the stock grey grille doesn't reflect light for ****, but this would now aye? Upper class hahaha:cool:

I reckon the 2 pics should show the grille from the same angle, not different angles because different angles = different shadows etc which makes it impossible to say yes/no its different.

well everyone else is just blind man.

i think i will be doing this on my old tj which is now my mums...

i rekon it is a a pretty good mod, what do they have behind the holes on the vrx bar??? maybe these would be worth doing aswell...

IMO it looks pretty phat, and im sure will look even better in real life.

im sure it looks much better in real life

over here we expect to see obvious results, none of this subtleness crap!

haha

nice work

also, ur car looks great man!

we need a few more angle shots of the front though. i dont think theres enough.

FIY That $3 clear coat will crack fade and peel in about 3 months if kept in the sun - not meant to spray that stuff on cars really.
get a good gloss acrylic on it in spray form

i didnt notice the difference until you posted the two pics in the one pic thing later
i was looking at the first lot going... where the after photos uploaded...? i cant see anything!

looks subtly good tho :)

yer the last pic shows the difference better but still not a great deal of difference. very subtle. Good thinking at least

i rekon it is a a pretty good mod, what do they have behind the holes on the vrx bar??? maybe these would be worth doing aswell...

IMO it looks pretty phat, and im sure will look even better in real life.

Cheers :) There's nothing behind the VR-X bar. I've tossed up sticking some black mesh behind it. Although if I did that, I'd probably re-do the grill and put mesh in there too.


FIY That $3 clear coat will crack fade and peel in about 3 months if kept in the sun

Car spends most of the time undercover. Oh well. I'll just get a Verada or Ralliart grill if it goes off :P