Manufacturing a sports grille for your rubber bumper project with integral spots.

In addition to the page on manufacturing a sports grille for a B/BGT this page adds new material on how to incorporate spotlights and achieve a different look.  You'll need to read the above link to see how to disassemble the grille.

In this instance the work has been done on Stephen Whitham's BGT, and here, thanks to a local enthusiast, Mike Cornes, a spare grille was available for the princely sum of £15.  The dismantling was quite simple, merely drilling out all the rivets to remove the honeycomb structure.

However, unlike on my car, the fitting of the grille with its integral spotlights was not going to be as straight forward.  Whereas I had left my bumper mounting plates intact, this was not going to be possible on Stephen's car owing to the space constraints.  These spotlights we're using are from a K-reg Polo that was being scrapped, and are a Hella brand.  However, they're ideal for the project and it could be said almost factory fit!  The units had been previously wired in with relays and dashboard switch, so here they simply needed unplugging from the wiring.

We initially tried to work around the need to cut the bumper plates, and tried the grille and lights in a more central position which we very quickly decided was not going to work, plus we weren't sure of the legal minimum distance between the lamps.  You can see, though, that the lamps would then clear the bumper plates.

However, we did some measuring and decided to cut off the section of bumper plate that would allow a clean fit, and that would be the easiest to reach with the power-saw.

At this point we then pondered how to fit the lights so that we had a neat finish to the mesh we were going to use around the spots.  Prior to this Stephen had fabricated some brackets but short of fabricating new ones we weren't going to get an easy refit to position the lights exactly as we wanted them.  Our thoughts then turned to the grille frame itself, so the spots were then tried inside the frame, and it transpired they fitted almost perfectly.

We looked at various options to make clips to hold the spots onto the grille, but in the end we simply marked the overlap on the grille where the light unit sat up tight against the end, and then made small cuts and folded the metal over to create three small recesses in which the unit could sit.  We then used cable ties to secure the light to the grille.  I would suggest that this may not be a long-term solution owing to chafing and heat, so we will work on a better arrangement in due course.

We later cut off the bracket showing in the photograph to get a clean finish.

At this stage, I then marked out the area of mesh required and cut this.  As on mine Stephen opted for the cheaper mesh (£18) from Halford's Ripspeed section as this reduces the amount of visibility behind the grille whereas the Diamond mesh (as used on modern MG's) is more expensive at £30 and would expose more of what's behind in the way of the chassis rails etc.  However, the latter option would probably allow better airflow.

Stephen had early on decided on a black mesh, so at this stage we gave the mesh a coat of primer and followed by matt black.  I had created a couple of test pieces previously with both matt black and Brooklands green, but matt black was the final call.

The next part then called for fitting it to the grille securely.  We started by folding the excess at the top and bottom in over the frame, with the semi-circular cut-outs for the spots sat just behind so that the mesh edges would not be visible at the front.

Once that was in place we were able to refit the centre badge bar.  At the top the badge bar is held in place by two screws.  We used longer countersunk screws to pass through the mesh into retainer plates we had cut, and these being self-tappers, they pulled up tight.

At the base, we needed a bracket to secure the lower part of the grille so we again decided to incorporate this with the mesh and the screw that goes vertically in to the bottom of the badge bar.

Because the grille is not flat, but curves outwards, or forwards, the pressure at the centre was enough to pull the mesh up tight against the rest of the grille and behind the spots.

And then this is the look from the front.  The new badge is <£5 and well worth buying as many second-hand grilles will have faded or have poor condition badges.   A few minutes spent with the hot-melt glue gun had the new badge in place.  Stephen chose the badge from the earlier cars with the black surround as opposed to my choice on mine with an all red background.

At this stage we trial fitted and marked the hole necessary to drill for securing the lower bracket with a self-tapper.  The complete fit was quite straight forward, a matter of tightening up all the nuts etc and reconnecting the spots and testing.

The end result was, and is, superb!

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