Hey, guys.
Joe from American Trucks, and today I'm going to be reviewing and installing the Upper Replacement
Grille in Chrome, fitting all '15 to '17 F-150s, excluding the Raptors.
Now this grille is going to be perfect for the F-150 owner who's looking to change up
the styling of the front of their F-150 with a chrome grille that looks like it could have
come straight from the factory.
Just like the factory grille, this has that three bar styling that's so iconic of the
newer F-150s, and it's manufactured out of automotive grade ABS plastic, which is going
to be durable but lightweight, and then features a bright chrome finish, which complements
the front end of our F-150 here, namely the reflector housing on the headlights and fog
lights, perfectly.
Now, another great thing about this grille is if your truck was optioned with a front-facing
camera, a lot of grilles don't allow for that to peek through.
This one's great.
It already has a slot cut out for that camera.
Now if this bright chrome is not your thing, we also offer this same exact grille with
a matte chrome finish, so it's gonna look chrome, but be a little bit less reflective.
Or if you're going for the blackout look, we also have this in matte black too.
Not only is this grille great as an upgrade, but if your original grille does break, this
is perfect to drop in as a replacement.
Now, if that is the situation and your grille broke and you're replacing it, I just wanted
to make a quick note.
This does not come with the Ford emblem, so if that is broken, you will have to pick up
another one of those.
Now it's a nice product.
It fits perfectly, and on top of that, with pricing coming in at around that $250 price
point, is not too bad, especially when you've considered all the other F-150 grilles on
our site that cost double or even triple the price.
Install for this grille is going to be pretty easy as well.
I'm going to give it a harder one out of three wrenches on our difficulty meter, but it should
still only take you an hour with some basic hand tools, as there's no drilling or modifications
required to get this on there.
So, let me show you how it's done.
For this install, you will need an impact or a ratchet, flathead screwdriver, 6-inch
extension, trim panel removal tool, 8-millimeter socket, and 10-millimeter socket.
So first things first, we gotta open up our hood.
Now the way we're going to approach removing this grille is we're going to take the shutter
assembly with it and then transfer the shutter assembly over to our new grille.
That's the easiest way to do this.
Now in order to get at that, we have to remove this radiator shroud, we're gonna remove this
body panel colored piece here, then there's some 10-millimeter bolts around the grille,
and this thing pops right out.
So first we gotta get this cover out of the way.
In order to do that, we have to remove these clips here.
There's about 10 of those and there's another two on the body colored panel piece here.
We're going to use a trim panel removal tool to remove those.
Now obviously, hold onto these.
We are going to be reinstalling them later.
Also with these two, be really careful, you don't want them to fall in your intake.
There's a rubber cover around the grille here held on with this one, so we're just going
to remove that as well.
Ours is a little bit ripped, but that needs to come out regardless.
And now you can remove that big plastic trim piece.
That's going to reveal the four 10 millimeter bolts holding our grille on.
Next, we are going to unclip the electronics for our shutter, and we're also going to remove
the Christmas tree clip that holds that onto the grille.
So now we're gonna turn our attention to this body colored piece around our headlight here.
There's a couple more Christmas tree clips and 10-millimeter bolts along each side of
our grille.
Now in order to allow us to get at that, all you have to do is give this a pull.
This will peel away and allow you to access that.
If you wanted to completely remove that, there's two 7 millimeter bolts in the fender here
that will allow you to take this off completely, but all you need to do is peel this back in
order to access what we need.
So now that we have access to the side of our grille, we're going to remove this Christmas
tree and this Christmas tree and this 8 millimeter bolt right here.
Then do the same thing to the other side.
So with those two 8 millimeter bolts removed, you can now pull up on the grille and then
out, and it'll pop right out.
And you could see our shutter assembly on the back.
We're going to be transferring this over to our new grille on the table.
So once you put your grille down on the table, make sure you got a nice microfiber rag under
it, because we are going to be reusing our Ford emblem.
Now our shutter assembly is held to the grille with four 10 millimeter bolts and a couple
of push pins up here.
So we're going to be removing those.
Now these 10-millimeter bolts can be a little bit difficult, being mainly because there's
no head to the bolt side of them.
So what we're going to do is probably put some tension down on this washer.
That will hold it still and allow us to remove the nut off of the top.
So what I'm gonna actually do for this one is apply some upward tension with the trim
panel removal tool.
Now all that's left holding our shutters to the grille are these four plastic push pins
on top.
And now we can pull our shutter assembly away from the grille.
And we got one thing left to remove on our grille and that is the Ford emblem.
Now, in order to remove that, you have to remove this nut here, and these are very fragile.
This post is actually plastic and as this nut goes on at the factory, it cuts it own
grooves.
So be very gentle with this.
I'm gonna swap over from the power tools to the hand tools in order to get that off.
And there's two more on the other side.
And with that, our Ford emblem pops right out.
So with our Ford emblem off of our factory grille, I just wanted to take a second to
lay it on the table next to our replacement grille and point out some of the key differences.
And right off the bat here, the key difference is finish.
We're ditching this black plastic look for a more refined, mature chrome look.
We're also losing this honeycomb on the side of the factory grille entirely and we're changing
out this more open design from the factory for again, a more refined closed off look,
as this has more fins in between the three bars on the grille.
Right here, we have our opening for the forward facing camera, and the design of the three
bars changes a little bit compared to the stock one.
So with those key differences in mind, let me show you how the new replacement grille
installs on your truck.
So now we're just going to grab our new grille and get started on the install.
First step obviously is to reinstall the Ford emblem.
Our new grille comes with new hardware for the shutters, so I'm just gonna take an 8-millimeter
socket, loosen those up, and remove them.
That one's actually pretty loose.
And again for this one, and two more on the other side.
So now we can drop on our shutter assembly and in order to help line that up, there's
three alignment posts at the bottom.
Now once we have that in place, we can reinstall our push pins along the top.
So now we're going to install our new shutter hardware, and again this can be kind of tricky.
Make sure you put tension on wherever you need in order to get these nuts to seat tight.
And same thing for all four corners.
So all you're gonna do to get this on, again, you want to start up and then push in and
drop the grille into place to make sure it lines up.
Now at this point, we're looking pretty good.
All we're going to do is install that 8 millimeter bolt here, here.
Push in our Christmas tree clips on either side, 10-millimeter bolts up top.
Put that radiator cover back on with some pushpins, plug back in our electronics, and
that is going to be it.
And now we're just going to plug our electronics back in through the shutters and we're going
to hit the four 10 millimeter bolts on top.
So next we can install our cover.
You peel back the intake a little bit, line it up, and then get all of our push pins back
in.
And that is going to do it for my review and install of the Upper Replacement Grille in
Chrome, fitting all '15 to '17 F-150s, excluding the Raptors.
Keep it right here at americantrucks.com.