Godzilla

honestly fibreglassing it was really easy and its right strong. i think its probably the better way in the end.

fireteacher

lol

please post a couple close up pics of the grill so i can see what your talking about

Godzilla

heres a few extra pics.

Godzilla

fireteacher

sorry that there a bit blurry...it was acctually darker than that outside... will get some better ones tomorrow

ebelen1

That looks good. Great job...

Godzilla

sweet!

fireteacher

ty, ty, ty!
what an accomplishment. really it was pretty easy but for me, working with epoxy, paint, and having to take my time
(which is hard to do...i wanted it done in 1 day hahaha) proved a bit challenging. already, people have asked me where i bought the grill and how much it cost!! i love it!

also, the wire mesh is actually a material used for plastering drywall called "lath" or something to that effect. a HUGE sheet of this, enough for 10-15 grills cost me 7 bucks at home depot. where as actuall grill guard would have cost me 32 from pep boys where you only get one shot with it! the sheet from depot is like 8 feet long and over 3 feet wide.

thanks all who have helped with this mod and answered my pm's!

Speedy

I'm 85% complete with the Satoshi grill. What a PITA it has been. I'm super anal and over engineer everything so that's probably why. It's not been hard per se', just tedius and time consuming.

The fiberglass was the easiest part. The Bondo a little harder. I'm gonna pick up some finishing putty today to fill in the little pits in the bondo. I believe they're from air pockets that show up when sanding. Other than the 5 or 6 little pits it's perfect.

I found some 1/4" expanded aluminum sheet at a local machine shop. The guy sold me a 18" x 48" sheet for $16. Seemed kinda pricey but he said that's what they pay for it. The expanded aluminum looks almost exactly like what came in 69-73 FJ40s only it's a tad smaller opening which fits the smaller 4Runner grille better. It took me about 2 weeks to locate this material.

Shaping this metal was the hardest part of the project by far. I didn't want to just have it overlap the opening, I wanted it to bend around the edges. This makes it much more rigid. So I had to use pieces of wood and a hammer and form the expanded aluminum to the shape of the grille opening. That part took about 2 hours.

All I have left to do is mount the metal to the grille, mount the Toyota emblem, then take it all apart for painting. I hope to finish today and I'll post some pics in a new thread.

For those that opted to paint their grille mesh, has anyone had issues with stone/rock chips at all? I've considered having mine powder coated but that raises the price for this project considerably.

HuskyRunner

http://store.4wheelauto.com/index.php?cat_id=95&catname='Mirrors%20&%20Misc' I found this place when I was looking for an emblem. $40 or $105 your choice.