How To Replace Grille 2002-08 Dodge Ram 1500

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Hi, I'm Mike Green. I'm one of the owners of 1A Auto. I want to help you save time and money repairing or maintaining your vehicle. I'm going to use my 20-plus years experience restoring and repairing cars and trucks like this to show you the correct way to install parts from 1AAuto.com. The right parts installed correctly: that's going to save you time and money. Thank you and enjoy the video.

In this video we're going to show you how to replace the front grille on this 2004 Dodge Ram same as any '02 to '08. On this vehicle, we run into some rusty fasteners, so we show you how to get around those. Tools you'll need are 8mm socket with a ratchet and extension, actually or just an 8mm wrench will work on this too, vise grips if your fasteners are rusty like ours were and some adhesive for the emblem.

In this video we're going to show you grille replacement. You can see a new grille from 1A Auto is the exact same as the old one. It will help you out if you want to replace your grille with a new one from 1A Auto. Over time these ones will fade out and also obviously a little bit of front end damage can ruin your grill, so you know you can get a good one from 1A Auto if you need one.

It's a pretty easy procedure. I'm going to use a little bit of penetrating oil. This helps get those nuts off, but as you'll see in this they actually end up pulling out of the grille and not loosening themselves anyways, but maybe this will help you. Use an 8mm socket ratchet with extension. What should happen here is, those nuts should just come right off their metal studs, but the metal studs usually rust, and on this vehicle what ends up happening is all the nuts come off a little ways, and then the studs just kind of turn out of the grille. You may find this happens. It's not a big deal. You just pull the grille off. Also you can see me doing the 8mm bolts down at the bottom of the grill. Those are pretty easy. Those usually come right out. We'll pick it back up again as I release the last couple of top bolts.

What happened here is these studs came out of the grille because it was easier to remove the metal from the plastic than the metal nuts that are on the back. Hopefully you're penetrating oil treatment might have prevented that, but if not, here are vice grips. Clamp on. Usually they come without too much trouble. Especially if you're giving them a lot of penetrating oil and let it sit for a little bit. You want to make sure you remove all of those and save the nuts for the new grill.

Before I put the new grille on, I actually cleaned up this and I actually put a coat of wax on there. Then the new grill. You have a couple locating pins that go in. This ones going okay. Start a couple of these lower bolts on. I am going to fast forward again as I just start by hand all the different fasteners. Then I get my 8mm socket and ratchet and extension out and tighten them all up. Then after that you're going to want to also transfer over your emblem which I will show you in just a minute.

I'm going to get our emblem off with a really small, sharp screw driver here. You'll notice I go in there with 2 screwdrivers. That's because I'll kind of say so later in the video, but there's the outside chrome ring, and then the black part inside is somewhat a different piece. With one screwdriver you want to start the outer chrome piece and then with the other screw driver you can reach in there and get that black part of the emblem as well. You want to make sure you don't pry too hard on the chrome ring around it. You want to get in there underneath the black before you really start prying. There are two parts you have to get: both this chrome around and then you have to pry in underneath and get the black part as well. Now as far as putting the logo back on, just follow the instructions of whatever you might use for adhesive. I'm going to use some trim adhesive which requires a clean surface, but it also wants some surface area to hold onto, so I'm just going to lightly scratch this chrome area because it's actually a little too smooth for adhesive to grab onto. There's our new grille with our emblem and everything all attached.

We hope this helps you out. Brought to you by www.1AAuto.com, your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the Internet. Please feel free to call us toll-free, 888-844-3393. We're the company that's here for you on the Internet and in person.