How to Replace Front Grille 2001-05 Honda Civic

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Hi, I'm Mike from 1A Auto. I hope this how-to video helps you out, and next time you need parts for your vehicle, think of 1AAuto.com. Thanks!

In this video, we're going to show you how to replace your front grille. New grille from 1A Auto, you can see molded in black. You can paint it to match. It will make a great replacement and it will bolt right in just like the original.

Items you will need for the repair are a new grille from 1AAuto.com, flat blade screwdriver, 10mm socket ratchet or wrench, Phillips screwdriver, and adhesive.

Pull the lever right here. Open your hood. Secure it with the prop rod, and there are four clips at the top to remove. There are indents on each side of the outside so that you can just work a screwdriver underneath and pry up the center and then pull the clip up and out. I will repeat that for the other three.

At the front of the wheel well on each side is a 10 millimeter bolt right here you need to remove, and, again, this is on each side. Also, on each side you'll want to pull the wheel well down. This side is very broken on this vehicle but just pull it so it's like this and it's not holding the bumper cover. Underneath there should be a series of these push pins just like the top and there actually may be a couple of 10 millimeter bolts thrown in as well but this vehicle has been run over a few things and then put together with wire ties so you just need to either remove the clips, undo the bolts. I'm not even sure how many of them I could tell you should be here, probably anywhere from 6 to 8 of them but we'll go ahead and do that on this car.

Release each side just by pulling firmly. Then I'm going to have to just pull a little bit and it will come off.

A series of Phillips screws to remove: one here and then one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and a tenth here. Obviously, this car has been apart many times because only two screws are left right now. Most likely they'll be Phillips screws. I'm not sure. I'll just remove them all.

Once those are out, this rear grille panel, the closeout panel will come off. Now there's four clips to remove and they are just like the bumper cover. Pry up the middle, then you can pry the grille off. Push it forward, unlock it.

Here you can see the part we removed from the vehicle and the Honda symbol is just glued on. This car has been apart before though, so I'm not sure exactly if this is how it came apart. It doesn't appear that there are any fasteners that hold it on.

Here's the new grille from 1A Auto. See it's molded in black, front, back is all the same, has all the same mounting points. It's going to go in and replace your original and obviously you could paint this to match your original grille. Go to an automotive store that has a paint department. They can mix you up some paint that will match well enough and you can spray it yourself. You also can just leave it black. For this purpose since this grille already matches the vehicle, we are going to reinstall the old grille.

You can see we are re-installing our old grille because it matches the vehicle already. You want to make sure that all the tabs around the perimeter of the grille slide into the slot that's around here on the bumper cover. You just put it in place and slide it in.

Re-install the two screws that secure the grille to the bumper cover. Re-install the four clips. These probably aren't the right clips so they don't go in very easy. Put the base in and then put the locking clip in. Put this upper closeout panel back on. Make sure it goes up above the ears on the side. Then just make sure all the tabs in the bumper cover line up.

It's a little bit of a project to get it to line up correctly. Get it lined up. This tab is lined up with this up, to line that up, and once you get those on this side put a screw in. Okay, just keep going along. That one is lined up, that's lined up. Put that one up into place.

Start this screw here. Bumper cover back in place. Make sure you go underneath the latch lever and line it up on the headlights and then put these clips back in to hold it in place.

Reinstall this 10 millimeter bolt on each side. Once the bolt is back up in push your inner fender, or in this case what's left of the inner fender up and in. On this side this corner is all broken so we actually put a plate in there and screwed it down into the bumper cover.

It's not beautiful but it's going to make at least the bumper cover pretty much stay where it should be.

Okay, so there should be a bunch of clips in here, but they're all missing from this car so we're going to kind of put it back together the way it came apart using some wire ties and just secure the bottom. Close the hood. Just follow the instructions on your favorite type of glue. Glue the emblem back in place.

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