How-To: Fog Vent Mesh Mod on the Heritage Edition!

[GoofyTimL]

I hope this is the right place to post this... my first do-it-yourself mod!

I have always hated the "blanks" in the 300C fog vents. Why put those therer if you're not going to use them for something... ram to a CAI, or at the very least more air flow to the engine compartment for general cooling.

Anyway... serveral months ago, Bert aka NautcaSprt6, had posted that he had some chromed mesh fog vent panels he wasn't going to use. I sent him a message that I was interested and he sent them my way. Well, today I finally decided to "investigate" the Heritage Edition and see how difficult it was going to be to access the vents, get those blanks off, and begin fitting the mesh inserts.

I had read that getting under the bumper facia was not that difficult and it wasn't once I got the car up on the ramps. Thanks to those of you who have posted previously about using some thin boards to pre-raise the car to avoid rashing the facia on the ramps. That came in handy!

I took off the engine access pan (4 bolts - 10 mm)
I then took off the facia skirt pan. This involves about a dozen little 7 mm screw bolts (I think that was the size), and three push pin rivets on each side (connects the wheel well plastic. Then I removed the side vanes from the lower facia area. This involves two push pin rivets each. I did not put these back when I was done. This gave me access to the passenger side vent, but not the driver side vent.

The most difficult thing to do was remove the stock intake air silencer on the driver side. First I removed the filter box on top, simply because I wanted to see what lay below. Removing the filter box is straightforward... remove the 10mm hold down bolt. Loosen and then detatch the intake tube, and pull off the oil breather tube from the back. Lift it out.

Getting the silencer out takes a bit more effort. First, from below, you pry the silencer toward the outboard side until it's two rubber bushings come out of the bumper support. Then you push it forward to give you visible access to it's hold-up bolt (10 mm) securing it to the bottom of the strut through which the upper stem of the silencer passes to the filter box. Once the bolt is removed the silencer drops out with only very mild persuasion required.

After this I could see the vent blanks and how they were attached. Two plastic tabs on the bottom, which come free with just a little finger pressure. One plastic tab (outboard) on the top, which works about the same. And the bugger... a spring clip on the inboard upper plastic tab. To remove this you have to use a regular screwdriver and pry it down until it will rotate and fall out. Then you pull back on the blank and it comes right off.

Then it was time to start fit-testing the mesh inserts. I wasn't certain how I would keep them in place. But it became apparent that I could snip some of the mesh and perhaps use the plastic tabs that were already there.

This is what the final fit of the driver side looks like from behind the facia...


IN essence I cut a "slot" for each of the 4 solid plastic tabs so that the edges of the oversized insert would be hidden. For the tab which had held the spring clip, I cut the mesh so that a "point" of the mesh would be forced into the clip hole. Thus there is pressure on the inner surface of all four tabs, and the "point" through the hole keeps the insert from the possibility of vibrating out.

Here's the finished look from the exterior of the driver side... you can see the silencer behind the mesh due to the flash. I don't think it will be very visible in the daytime due to the shine off the chrome mesh.


Here's the finished look on the passenger side... here you can see the bottom of the windshield washer fluid reservoir (white, or blue-ish). I may have to blacken that to keep it less visible in natural light.


And finally... backed the Heritage Edition off the ramps, and took the "money" shot... I like it!


Now while I was under there, I did a little rearranging of the wire harness for the fogs (taped it up and out of the way to the bumper metal). The brake fluid line (at least that's what it appeared to be) I took off it's mounting pins and taped it to the lower facia... at least temporarily. The reason being, it seems to me there is plenty of room in that lower facia to devise a duct system that will connect the fog vents together to feed a CAI system with a little more work. Maybe that will be my next attempt at a second step mod.