Installed my OEM 442 grilles today ..very happy with the results.😀

 

It's the style of grill these cars should have been built with from the word go. Only thing they should have done was make some that accept the Oldsmobile script. BTW, you'll notice quite a few less bugs splattered on your rad support from now on. Dave, the drivers side of the bumper looks like it needs to come up a bit. Check the AM for specs on that. I had to spend about 3 hours getting mine just right. Left side looks spot on.

 

Yeah Allan, about that bumper. I spent an hour trying to get that side adjusted, but no luck. I know there's a slotted adjustment on the rear frame bolt, and the front frame bolt slot is at an angle, so I could only do so much. I gave up and set it back the way it was when I started...right now I'm about an inch gap, but it's only supposed to be 5/8 with plus or minus 1/16.

If you lend your advice, I'd appreciate it.

 

Good looking car, I love those hood scoops and the 442 grill definitely and improvement.

 

Good looking car, nice job on the grill too. Its seems every front bumper as been tweaked...at some point. I've owned my car a long time and currently on its third bumper. Finding each one just a little straighter than the last one, but still not perfect.

 

Dave,
It took me quite awhile to get my front bumper aligned close to the factory specs. It involved loosening the front bracket to frame bolts, thumping the bumper into place, then got my son to apply upward pressure on the outside edge while I tightened the bolts back up. It's not something most of us can do in 5 minutes. It takes time to get that gap just right. Took me 2 hours to get my back bumper to perfect specs and it looks great. Note: that bumper is extremely flexible.

There appears to be somewhat excessive gap between the hood and stone shield. That can also be tweaked to get close to factory specs. I had a somewhat similar issue, but not quite so large a gap.

 

How does one tweak the stone shield? I didn't see any adjustment for that.

 

That's true. Perhaps adjusting (lowering) the hood rubber bumpers on the rad support a bit lower might help. I'm trying to remember what I did with mine. The gap was better than perfect. I'll try to dig out a picture for ya.

 

 

Actually the stone shield can be adjusted, I think the assembly manual illustrates how it fits...I moved my lower to have the correct gap between hood and shield.

 

Lower??? Stone shield???

 

Allan, if I adjust my bumpers, won't that cause the hood alignment to be lower than the fenders?

 

Sorry, I’ve haven’t done any body adjusting in a few years, too adjust the gap between the hood and shield shield, I lowered the hood tongue using body shims, only works on OEM hoods.

 

Dave,
You're right that lowering the hood bumpers too much will affect the alignment side to side on the fender/hood. When I did my grills I also had to re-align my hood. It had to come forward almost 1/4" and I think that's what ended up making the alignment with the stone shield work better? I'm not a bodyman so I can't really say if that gave me the desired effect. In the meantime the way it sits isn't hurting anything.