Painting the grille

Awesome, this is exactly what I wanted to hear. I've heard horror stories of it just chipping off right away and showing chrome, but it sounds like if you do the prep correctly, you'll get your money's worth. Thank you!

 

You can see how it is if you compare to the bumper. (Relatively) slightly more chips, but again, were talking oem paint vs diy stuff. The direct sunlight makes for a tough pic.
Don't mind the bug guts ....

 

Well...10 years later and it is time for a refresh! Interestingly enough, the worst of it isn’t what I consider the chips, but rather, the stock chrome is pulling away from the abs plastic. You can see it in the pic below. Up top, the long lines is the defects... I thought those long streaks was my paint job pealing but it’s actually the oem chrome. Almost like water hot between the chrome base layer and plastic and caused the separation.
I started this last night but came up to CT for the weekend so it’s on hold. But I have all the paint removed and even sanded some down to the raw plastic where it was separating. I guess I’m going to paint at this point and see how well it holds up or if I’m going to continue to get separation from the plastic and the chrome base layer. Removing the remaining chrome would take foreverrrrr. But I have a feeling painting on the raw plastic would also yield even better results. We’ll see. More pics to follow come Sunday or Monday.

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Finally finished this. The oem aluminum finish was peeling, so pulled all of it off. 4 hours later.....


Then prep sol, adhesion promoter, primer, 5 coats of blue and 3 coats of clear later.....