I just wanted to know how many cans of paint you guys needed to put 3 or 4 coats of paint on your OEM grille. I'm thinking one 12oz can should be enough, but just wanted to make sure before i buy stuff.

 

Less than 1 can

 

Yep, just double checked, less than 1-12 oz can

 

i used 1 can of primer, 1 can of paint, 1 can of clear...

 

1 can primer 2 cans of color.

 

bizillion layers of color and clear no primer.

dust is my enemy.

 

i think I used one tall can of color and one can of flat clear

 

one primer, one color, one clear. that's all i needed.

 

i'm no painiting expert- how "fool-proof" do you think doing this yourself is?

I wish there was a better process of blacking out the OEM grille; half of the painted grilles have so many tiny rock chips on it.

I'm assuming most of these blacked out grilles are gloss black?

.

 

there are several people who have done flat/matte, semi-gloss, and full gloss.

it's not difficult at all. sand, primer, sand again if necessary, paint, clear. that's it.

if you know how to use sand paper, use spray cans correctly (to apply even coats), then you can do this yourself.

eric can also have your grille painted for you for about $40 if you don't wanna do it yourself. that's really cheap, IMO.

and you can't really avoid rock chips...unless you don't drive your car.

i take that back, i'm pretty lucky. i don't have any rock chips and i've had my grille on for a few months now. don't tailgate, either. that'll only lead to more rock chips/faster.

 

Paint is never immune to rock chips, even professionaly painted pieces, just look at my front bumper! My grill has a few chips from the long journey up and down I-5 between portland/seattle, but the beauty of DIY and not using clear is that its super easy to touch up the grill. All you have to do is smooth out the chips, hit those bare areas with primer, scuff the rest of the paint, and lay down a new layer. As the layers get thicker and thicker, the paint only gets stronger.

 

Is the emblem easy to remove? I want to paint the grill black and leave the emblem chrome like aHero4Eternity. Or did you just tape that thing up?

 

once you remove the grille, you will see how the emblem is attached/clipped on. it's very easy to remove. however, you'll still have to paint part of the emblem...so you'll still have to tape part of it off.

 

Cool, thanks man. Now the question is whether to go matte or glossy.

 

do people usually paint their headlight housing with cans too? I'm guessing you dont have to sand stuff down fro the headlights =P