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Day 2 was rough.

Socal can kiss my ass

love socal, hate driving in socal

Entire time from Portland area to here all I could think was thank God I don't live on this side anymore. Dealt with traffic the entire time and the drivers and roads are so bad down here I felt like I aged 15 years. So exhausted from the stress of this area. I don't like it here.

Truck handles everything like a champ. Multiple full bed loads down there. Then around 2500 lbs of payload coming home. Felt great. Only real noticeable difference with the weight was greater stopping distance and much smoother ride. Still got 12.9 mpg.

That said, I've done this drive in a tiguan, mustang gt, volt, outback, and now f250. The 250 was the hardest. Lot more steering input needed and much harsher ride. Felt beat up each day. The outback on the other hand was great all 3 times I've brought that. So the 250 was perfect for the needed job, but next time I go, if I go again before they move, I'll bring the outback. Really want to bring the vette but I think that would bear me up too.

Did you see the eBay Morimoto links I posted to shout?

Just looked. It's about the same on their website with the current sale. Normally 975 but 10% off. But I'm waiting for them for now. Other things I want to take care of first

Gotcha. Didn't know the sale was that good.

I came across this while I was looking at grille options. I know you were complaining about the lack of good options for your truck. Maybe do a painted or plasti-dip stock grille? I kind of like this.



You could probably get a basic black fleet-spec grille pretty cheap like I did and start from there.

I have a few cans of plasti dip. I was debating on spraying some parts and seeing how it goes. I would love to find one that the outer part matched my color like that one does with the white.

That guy plasti-dipped his. The white doesn't quite match.

I found some with gloss black that matched really nice on black trucks. But nothing in my gray.

Something like this.



Leaves enough chrome to go with chrome bumper but also gets rid of some of the extra chrome.

That looks really good. Your gray with some blacked out headlights would look great.

You could always use something like the zep degreaser to strip the plastic chrome from the surround and paint it with a rattle can paint match and clear coat it.

Funny story about that.

It doesn't work. At least not on exterior chrome. I've got some badges I've had sitting in Purple Power for over a WEEK now, and it's only got a few small bare spots where I suspect the plating process was contaminated during production.

There's two kinds of chrome. The hard, multi-layer stuff they use for exterior trim that's exposed to weather, and vapor deposition coating used on interior trim bits and things like headlight reflectors. The degreasers work on the vapor stuff.

You can also use a heat gun to separate the chrome, but you run the risk of warping the plastic underneath, and you still have to manually peel the chrome off.

Remember when we had the orange Hummer? The chrome grille was bubbling. We found a guy locally who literally boiled it in industrial strippers, and it still barely took it off. I still had to do a few days of prep to get it paintable. It was miserable.

If Jason is going to keep the chrome center bars, then just plasti-dip over it. I've heard it's possible to sand and prep chrome for paint without totally stripping it, but it's a hassle. I might try it with my badges. If I was going to paint a grille (and I might) I'd absolutely start with a bare plastic one. I'd do that with the badges, but the only black ones I can find are XLT and not XL.

Oof that's a bummer. I'm glad I didn't try it on my old truck then. I bought the paint and clear coat and everything lol

Might try and get my hands on a used grill and experiment with it. Have 3 other car projects I need to finish first

My plan is to paint my chrome badges.

If I paint the grille I just bought, it'll just be a matte or satin black to cover up the UV fading. I'll probably experiment on the broken one first.

I'll be sure to share my notes on what works and what doesn't.

Painted center grill looks weird without the bumper being color matched as well. If you could get both to match then it might look good.

Thanks to Jeff

Oh yeah