Hey guy, it's Sara with americantrucks.com.
And today, we have a review and install of the Rough Country Mesh Upper Replacement Grille
in Black, fitting your '15 to '17 F-150, excluding the Raptor.
This is perfect for the F-150 owner that's looking for a sleek black replacement grille
that deletes the factory emblem.
This mesh upper replacement grille features aggressive styling, giving your truck that
blacked out look, but also adds these bolts for an accent as well.
This grille features a steel construction with a black powder coat finish and the Rough
Country logo in the center.
It's also compatible with your front camera and it reuses the factory shutter system.
So as far as price goes, this grille comes in at around $200, which is on the lower end
price-wise when compared to other options.
And for your money, you're getting this nice mesh black replacement grille that deletes
your factory emblem.
I'm giving this install a three out of three wrenches on the difficulty meter, mostly because
the install is fairly intensive and time-consuming.
You do need to bolt together several pieces of this grille and you may need to adjust
your body panels accordingly to ensure that it fits nicely.
But all in all, this can be done in approximately four hours.
So with that said, let's jump into our install.
For this install, we used an impact gun, but a ratchet will work fine, 10, 8, and 7/16
sockets, an extension, a 5/32 Allen socket, 7/16 ratcheting wrench, and a 5/32 Allen key,
as well as a pop clip removal tool.
All right, so the first step in our install is to grab your pop clip removal tool and
remove all the pop clips that hold on our rad support cover.
All right, so we're gonna start with these two pop clips that holds on this part of the
intake.
It also holds on the rad support cover so they need to come off as well.
Moving along, there are three in this channel back here.
You wanna make sure to remove these.
And moving around to the rest of the pop clips holding on the cover.
Now you can lift up this part of the intake, you don't need to remove it, and slide out
the cover.
Now we can remove our grille.
And before we do that, we wanna make sure to unplug both of these connectors first so
we're not wrestling them later.
Next up, we can remove the four 10-millimeter bolts that hold on the top of the grille.
Grab your 10-millimeter socket and let's get these out.
Next up, we have to remove a pop clip holding on this trim piece so we can get it out of
the way and remove the final bolts holding the grille in.
Once you've pulled back the panel here to release some metal clips, you don't need to
remove this all the way if you don't want.
We just need to remove that 8-millimeter bolt down there.
So grab an 8-millimeter socket and an extension, and let's pull this out.
Repeat that on the other side.
All right, so at this point, we can remove our grille.
Now there are plastic tabs going down right along the top, so you'll wanna lift it up
and then pull it out.
Okay.
Next up, we can remove the shutter assembly from our grille by removing these 10-millimeter
nuts.
Grab your 10-millimeter socket and let's get these off.
All right, you also have to remove these four pop clips that hold on each grille to the
top using your pop clip removal tool.
Once those are off, you can go ahead and pull the shutter assembly off the grille.
All right, so we have both pieces of our Rough Country grille laid out here and we're gonna
begin to bolt them together.
You're gonna wanna grab the smaller hardware as well as a lock nut, and begin to bolt these,
skipping the two center locations in each corner because this is where we're gonna bolt
the brackets so it can bolt onto our truck.
I suggest sliding it to the edge of a table or maybe laying it across something where
you can get access to the back of it.
Make sure you're installing with the Allen head bolt facing outwards.
This should be on the surround area, not on the mesh area so that you get the design that's
shown.
We're just loosely installing these for now, we will come back and tighten later on.
Next up, we're gonna skip this bottom corner, both bottom corners you skip to install a
different bracket there.
We're gonna move on to the one that's directly next to it.
And I marked these, the ones to skip off, with masking tape at the very beginning.
Any way that you wanna remember which ones to skip is totally fine.
So then we're doing two and then skipping the next one.
Then the very bottom center we're also gonna skip, skipping the one after that.
And if you're unsure of which ones to install and which ones not to, they do have an included
diagram in the directions.
Refer to that one to be sure.
And skipping the other corner as well.
And then skipping the very top corner after this bend.
May take a little maneuvering to get through both pieces of metal, especially once you're
nearing the end of the hardware that you need install.
Now we're skipping this next one.
We skipped the top two, sort of even with the ones that we skipped on the bottom.
Installing this one in the center, skipping the one after that, and finally skipping this
last corner.
Now we're moving on to the center sections.
We're gonna still install all of these.
All right, now we're gonna go ahead and tighten these down.
Now we're holding the bolt on top with a 5/32 Allen key and we're rotating the nut on the
back.
This is just to keep it from scratching any of the power coat.
We're using a 7/16 ratcheting wrench to tighten down the nut.
All right, next up, we're going to mount these brackets in order to mount our grille and
they face like this, and they go towards the top two openings that we left blank.
Now lift up the corner of your grille and install the bolts through the bottom and then
install a lock nut on top.
Repeat that with the other top center mounting point.
Slide the bolt in, slide the bracket over top.
Make sure it's facing towards the grille.
And then the lock nut goes on top there.
All right, now these corner brackets on top here, they're gonna be these U-notch brackets,
they are sort of slanted towards the side.
You want them to slant in towards the center of the grille.
Again, we're gonna install the bolt through the back of it since we have the grille sitting
on its face and then install a lock nut on top.
Repeat that with the opposite corner, again, installing this bracket facing inwards.
Make sure the brackets are facing the appropriate direction and are lined up straight and we're
gonna tighten these down.
Just keep in mind, we're keeping the Allen head side held as still as possible and tightening
from the nut side so that we don't damage any of the powder coat, especially the one
that's facing on the outside of the truck.
All right, next up, we're installing these two offset flat brackets on the outside edge
of the bottom part of our grille.
Make sure they're facing in and then go ahead and tighten them down.
Make sure when you are tightening it, they're facing the proper direction because you will
need to adjust it later in order to get your mounting point.
Repeat that on the other corner.
All right, so it's important to point out that if your truck does have a forward-facing
camera, they've included this bracket and it mounts towards the bottom of your grille
in this formation utilizing these three holes.
Now our truck does not have it, so we're just gonna leave it like this and mount it up to
our shutter.
We have our shutter assembly here and we're laying the Rough Country grille on top to
line it up with the brackets that we just installed.
So it may help to rotate this bracket up a little bit in order to hit where it needs
to hit on the grille.
And using a washer and one of the Allen head bolts, line it up to the hole on the factory
grille and we are gonna use a washer on the other side.
And Rough Country points out that this grille is bendable.
It's designed to bend to sort of contour a little bit better to your factory grille.
Now we're gonna install hardware into the top mounting point of the grille the same
way.
Make sure you're using a washer and a lock nut.
Repeat that on the other side.
And finally, the last mounting point at the bottom.
Again, you may have to bend the grille to match the contour of the shutter.
Finally, install two bolts in the top of the grille on those mounting points.
Using our 5/32 Allen key, we're using a socket this time and a 7/16 wrench, tighten these
down.
Using our Allen key and a 7/16 socket tighten down the grille to the shutter at the top
mounting corner.
All right, so now that we have the Rough Country grille all put together and ready to go on
the truck, we can check it out side by side with our factory grille.
And as you can see, it's a complete style departure from the factory grille.
It features this mesh design with the Rough Country logo, rather than the Ford logo and
it really changes up the look from the factory horizontal bars.
So with that said, let's finish up our install.
All right now, we can install the Rough Country grille, line it up on the front.
And you may need to be sure that the tabs clear, especially if you didn't take those
sections out.
Now you can install the bolts to the bottom of the grille.
Line up your plastic trim piece, install the pop clip.
After you do the same thing on the other side, plug back in your wiring harnesses
and reinstall your hardware.
Reinstall the rad support cover.
Make sure you're tucking it under the intake portion, line it up with the existing holes
and install your pop clips.
All right, so that is gonna do it for the review and install of this Mesh Replacement
Grille.
And remember, for all things Ford, keep it at americantrucks.com.