We weren’t in love with the...
We weren’t in love with the stock grille, and what really bugged us was the huge gold Bow Tie emblem. Just because some marketing guy at Chevrolet decided that all of their vehicles (sans the Vette) had to wear the moniker, didn’t mean we had to like it.
In the last issue we gave our 2010 Camaro SS project car a makeover with some Anvil carbon-fiber parts and a splash of PPG paint over at Best Of Show Coach Works in Escondido, California. The new graphics really set our Camaro apart from the rest of the ’10s out there, but the stock Bow Tie-emblazoned grille just wasn’t making us all warm and fuzzy. We figure others, even some at GM, weren’t digging the stock grille either since Chevrolet offers a tasty alternative: their Heritage grille. With cleaner, and to us, more aggressive lines, it’s the way the Camaro should have looked when it rolled off the assembly line.
While the part just snaps in place of the stocker, the process of getting to the grille is a bit more complex and requires the nose of the Camaro be pulled off. Fortunately, it’s not rocket science and doesn’t require any specialized tools, so for that we have a GM engineer somewhere to thank.
The Heritage Grille came with...
The Heritage Grille came with detailed instructions, and while the part itself is easy to swap, it does require the nose of the Camaro be removed. This may sound daunting, but takes less than 30 minutes. First up, was removing the upper metric bolts.
The top of the nose was held...
The top of the nose was held to the car with plastic push pins in addition to the bolts. We gently popped them up to remove.
Two bolts secured the nose...
Two bolts secured the nose to the bottom side of the car. With these gone, we could move onto the harder-to-reach fasteners.
When Yancy Johns and Danny...
When Yancy Johns and Danny Thomas read the instructions, it hinted that it’s easier to get to the bolts if you pull off the front wheels. But we wanted to see if it could be done with them in place. Yes it can, but it would have been simpler to just pull the wheels off the car.
Three bolts hold the nose...
Three bolts hold the nose of the Camaro to the fender with number 1 being the hardest to get to. With these three gone, we could then slide the nose forward and off of the locating pins.
After unbolting the driver...
After unbolting the driver side, Johns and Thomas then removed the Camaro’s nose. The wiring for the nose was plugged into the rest of the car via a small plug on the passenger side of the car.