Front grille

 This will be done in multiple parts as it's going to take a few days. Before I get started though, a quick update on the injector loom. It went back on well and everything bolted together as expected. The plugs were a much tighter fit on the injectors so I'm happy with that. What I'm not so happy about is the main connector to the loom, it didn't clip back into it's retaining bracket. I think it's because it's so much more rigid now, it just didn't like being bent back on itself. That's good in a 'protection' kind of way, but I'm going to have to figure out how to better mount it. There is a second bracket very near to it that I think will go unused, I could enlarge that hole and fit it there but then it might cause an issue in the next part of the loom. I'm starting to see why builders dread wiring.

Back to the grille. The front mesh arrived;

It looks amazing in the flesh, significant overkill for the job it needs to do but it's going to look great on the car. It's pretty close to this example;

Which is obviously what I was after. The aluminium surround was taken from the template;

Copied on to the aluminium then plenty of masking tape was applied to protect the surface;

This part will show both sides of the aluminium, so while one side is protected by the plastic film (and will be most of the exposed surface), I need to do whatever I can to preserve the other side.

A quick cut to get it to a manageable size;

And the next stage will be trim and fold. Then I'll bolt it in place (rivnuts and screws most likely). Then the mesh can be measured and cut to suit. That bit I'm not looking forward to, the thickness of the wire suggests it's going to need a hacksaw or jigsaw rather than simple wire cutters. I'll replace this paragraph with the actual work once it's done, this is just a placeholder for now. 

After that it's the two sides, I have my cardboard at the ready for those. They will be simple curves fitted to the sides of the centre section above, reusing the same screws to fix them to the chassis and probably rivets to fix them at the front (the back of the rivet will be hidden behind the mesh support either side).