2003 Infiniti M45 Custom Grill

UPDATE:
Well I am almost done now. I have to wet sand and repaint the front slats since some some of my lines are not 100% straight and there are some imperfections in the paint. I went with satin black for the insides and a silver that kind of matches the silver in the headlights.

Overall I like the look of the grill a lot. I am probably the only person critical enough to see the imperfections but it bothers me. It was hard to paint in my neighborhood since its so windy and blowing dust around. I wish I had a clean environment to work in, things would have been so much easier and faster.

The last thing I have left to do is wet sand it after I cleared it last night. That should make the finish nice and smooth.

You can see where it needs the sanding in this pic.

Original Post:
I am working on customizing my grill on my Infiniti M45. I wanted to remove the Infiniti logo which is not as easy as just prying it from the grill. If you do that it leaves a large void in the center where the logo used to be. I took some custom knowledge that I gained from watching the various custom shows like American Chopper.

I used a dremmel tool to remove and grind down the area where the the logo used to be into a uniform shape. I used paper to make a template of the missing area. I then traced this shape onto a piece of plexiglass. I then cut out the plexi and glued it into the place where the logo used to be. You only need to do this for the lower area since the underside of the top area is not visible and not very deep. You can fill and shape this with bondo.

There are also little tabs that are about 2 inches apart on the slats. Since the logo was in the middle there were no slats there. I decided to remove these. It was a tough area to get into with the dremmel so once I had one out I slipped a hacksaw in and was able to cut them away at the base and it left barely any extra plastic. I left the outer most slats since I though it looked cool.

You also need to grind down the tow center posts that help on this back plate to the grill. Don’t get rid of them because you use them to put screws in and hold on the mesh we are going to put behind the grill. There is also a little plate that attaches to these posts, I may or may not put it back on.

Aside from the missing section in the top part of the slat there is also an indent in the face of the two center slats. To fill these areas and smooth out the the flat area I used some bondo.

Once you get the bond on you just scrape it into the rough shape you want using a flat firm object. I used some pieces of plexiglass I cut from the piece I bough to fill the center void. Make sure to build it up slightly higher than level. This gives you some material to sand away and shape it.

Now comes the fun part, sanding, sanding and more sanding. You need to sand down all the little nubs from where we removed the slats and also sand the center sections so they are flat and smooth. This takes time and is the most important part in making the final product look good. I bought a small hand sander from home depot that hat a crevice tool that allowed me to get in between the slats really easily. Don’t even think about trying this by hand.

Once you have it all sanded and close to what you want you spray the sections with the bondo with some spray paint, then sand again. As you sand you will any low spots will still have spray paint on them and you know to fill them with some more bondo and repeat the process. When it is all flat ans smooth you are ready to paint.

Since I cut the slats out you can now see a little to much behind the grill so I wanted to put some mesh there. I did not want to use the old home depot chicken wire since I think it looks tacky. Thankfully I live in Orlando and we have a store called Sky Craft. They have everything you could think of from switches, gauges wires led to plastics. They had a plastic sheet with circle mesh. It is silver and was just what I wanted, $3.50 a sheet. I found something similar online but it was about $40 a sheet.

Using the old paper template trick I shaped and cut a template then transfered it to my plastic mesh. I was able to cut it using some hand scissors. You can secure it in the back by putting two screws into the post holes that we left in the middle.

I think I am going to leave the mesh silver, paint the inside black and then paint the front of the slats a flat silver or gunmetal. Right now I am to the stage where I have roughed it all out and painted it black ready for a second sanding. Then I move on to painting. I will update this page as I finish the project. Much to the dismay of my wife I work on it about an hour or so a night.

I am almost done, I just have a few pin holes to fix and to prime and sand one last time.
I am trying to decide on what to paint the interior. I know I want to paint the front of the slats a silver/gunmetal.

I want to paint the insides black but I am not sure if I want to do it flat black, gloss black or plastidip (looks like factory abs plastic).