Does anyone know how to remove the front grille?

[Recumpence]

Hey Guys and Gals,

 

Does anyone here know how the front grille comes off? I am a fabricator and I would like to make my own carbon fiber front grilles. However, I have no idea how to remove the center large grille. The uppre grille is obvious and the lower one can just be covered over. But, the center grille protrudes on the sides and I would love to make my carbon fiber flat grill sit flush within the plastic nose of the car. This requires removal of the grille. I used my inspection camera to see behind the grille and I can see some clips, and I tried to release them. They are really tight clips. Before I break anything I figured I would ask if anyone here knows exactly how to pull that grille?   :~)

 

Matt

[jmckinley]

I think you have to remove the whole front cap.  Not particularly difficult, only takes about 30 minutes once you figure it out.

 

I had to do that to install the mounting bracket so I could hook up a tow bar for towing my C Max behind our motorhome.

 

This is a link to the instructions for installing the bracket which starts with removing the front cap. Just be careful, it's a big piece of plastic and it would be financially painful if you broke it.

 

http://www.roadmasterinc.com/pdfinst/524432-1.pdf

[plus 3 golfer]

For $10.95 you can get a 72 hour subscription for the shop manuals at MotorCraftService and print files to PDF.  I purchased the monthly subscription.

 

You have to remove the front bumper cover and then you can remove the grilles. There's many push clips / screws on the top, front inner fender, and underneath the bumper cover which you should be able to locate without the manual.  The link by jmckinley should suffice.

Edited April 22, 2013 by Plus 3 Golfer

[jmckinley]

Just for kicks, I looked at the Shop Manual to see if their instructions were better than Roadmaster's.

 

Wow!  Those are the worst illustrations ever.  Very difficult to figure out what's going on. Stick with the Raodmaster pdf.  It's a lot easier to follow.

 

Speaking of the Shop Manual.  Does anyone know how to save the whole thing as a pdf?  I tried printing to pdf and it will only do the current page.

[plus 3 golfer]

I couldn't find an easy way print the entire manual.  I could only print the lowest level subsection in the Workshop Manual at one time.  For example, the Climate Control Diagnosis and Testing subsection has 53 pages which would be printed to one PDF.  But many of the subsections are only a page or so.  So since there are a lot of subsections in the workshop manual, I'm only printing to PDF the pages that could potentially be useful to me.

 

However, for the wiring diagrams one can print all the pages under a section shown in the table of contents. For example, one section in the table of contents may contain from 1 to XX pages.   But, I could only get the multiple page selection process to work running XP under a VM. I could not get the multiple page print to work with Win 7. So now in the VM, when selecting the print icon and if there are more than one page in the section, a popup box now appears allowing selection of the page being viewed or multiple pages.  Thus, I could save all sections of the wiring diagram in about one hour (IIRC about 50 sections and probably 250+ pages).

[Recumpence]

Thanks Guys.

 

I appreciate it. I have no problem taking things apart. I just wanted to know if there was an easy way, or if the clip needs to be removed. So, now I know I need to remove the clip. No big deal. I jsut need to make sure I set aside enough time to do it.

 

So, here is a second question about the front clip;

 

Does anyone here know anything about the cool looking front clip I see on a couple pictires of Cmaxes out there? I see pictures every now and then of Maxes with a front clip that has one black grille in place of our lower two grille openings.......

 

Just curious. Maybe it is a Euro style front end?

 

Matt

[jmckinley]

Matt,

 

On my thread about towing with a motor home, one poster reported that when he did the removal the second time to make some revisions, it only took him 15 minutes.  I suspect that would be possible, now that I've done it once.

 

It's still scary, though.  That is one big piece of expensive plastic.  Fairly flexible however, so probably not a huge risk of breaking it.  I only had two plastic fasteners left over when I did mine.  Not bad for these types of things.

[Recumpence]

Thanks John.   :)

 

Matt