The stock honeycomb grille on our 2007 F150 5.4L Project Truck wasn't doing it any favors, especially since it's getting a "Halloween" black with orange styling theme. Anyway, the factory grille needed to go, and what better thing to replace it with than one of the most popular and most aggressive grilles for the 2004 to 2008 F150s: the SmittyBilt M1. SmittyBilt's grille looks tough before its even on the truck, and despite needing to be cut into the factory grille shell, installation was pretty straightforward. The end result was a whole different look for our F150, and once the chrome grille surround is its proper black. In any case, we were extremely pleased with the result, and cutting out the stock grille was less of hassle than it firs appeared.
The first thing we had to do was bring our lazy hides down to our good friends over at Extreme Performance down in Goodyear, Arizona, for a little assistance while we filmed and took photos. We were getting hand from both Jay and Kris on our grille install. We headed down there with our grille (and a bunch of other stuff that needed installs), cameras, and our truck. We pulled into one of Extreme's garages and Jay got started on our grille.
Jay's first step was to unbolt the stock grille from our truck in its entirety. This makes it immensely easier to cut and drop-in the SmittyBilt M1. He removed the bolts from the grill shroud brackets before getting all of the other grille bolts in sequence.
Once all of the bolts were out, Jay removed the grille from the truck.
The SmittyBilt M1 grille does require cutting, but you only need to remove the factory honeycomb. The black grille shroud and chrome surround stay in place. With that in mind, Jay grabbed a small sawzall and started cutting through the honeycomb sections connected to the shroud.
It took some time, but Jay made it all they way around the honeycomb section of the grille and he pulled it away from the surround and shroud.
The M1 grille comes with pre-installed studs around it perimeter that take a single bracket and nut. Jay dropped the brackets and nuts into place and tightened them down to finger tightness.
Once he had all the nuts and brackets on the studs, Jay tightened each one of them down and made sure the flat side of the bracket was positioned to fit against the OEM grille shroud.
After the brackets were tightened down, Jay dropped the assembled M1 grille into the OEM grille shroud to double-check the alignment of the brackets.
With everything looking good, Jay got an assist from Kris with holding the grille and grille shrouds together while bolted the two together.
Jay wasn't super impressed with SmittyBilt's bolts for the grille shroud and didn't want to drill each individually. Instead, he used self-drilling screws that happened to be around, which did a more than adequate job.
Jay went around to each bracket while Kris held the grille in place to prevent shifting.
After Jay got all the self-drilling screws into place, the entire grille assembly was ready to be bolted back to the truck.
Jay bolted the grille back onto our truck, and our install was complete.
