Well, when I had my grille guard on, I bottomed out on a rock and tweaked it a little bit. Before I straightened it back out, one of the main beams was rubbing against my grille and wore the paint off of it. Here's my solution:

Started with the grille: (note the scrapes and gouges)


First, Pop out the emblem



Next, carefully separate the two parts of the grille by unclipping the front half from the back half.


Next, get out some sand paper and get to work on the grille shell. I used 80 grit followed by 220. I wasn't worried about how rough the surface was because I intended to Rhino Line it. If you are just using paint, they go with a finer sandpaper.

After sanding, wash the shell, let it dry, and get ready to paint (or, in my case, spray-on bedliner)


I did 3 light coats so it still has a textured finish. It seems the thicker the coat, the smoother the finish.


Now, I may have fallen off of my rocker, but I thought the emblem would look good with a different color, so here's what I did with it while waiting for the bedliner to dry:

Taped over the Nissan lettering and used a razor blade to cut the tape


As you can see in the pic above, I f'd up a little bit on the first S, so I fixed it


Aint' she purrty:


Now, the emblem is a pretty tough material, so I used the 80 grit to scratch up the surface a bit, cleaned the emblem, dried it, and then hit it with 2 coats of primer and 3 coats of paint:



Now using the same razor after the paint dries a bit, remove the tape from the NISSAN letters:


Now, have a couple of beers while the paints dry, and then stick it all back together.

Presto: A new look for your X




This is something anybody can do without the use of any real tools. The most time consuming part of this job is waiting for the paint to dry.