I thought I should tell you the story of my grille!
As soon as the decision to buy the Bolero was taken, doing something worthy to the grille was one of the first lines of thought. I blackened the grille in the Autocar pic and was convinced something could be done to make it look less crappy! I had visions of taking an AXE to the showroom and wacking the grill off...much inspired by Jeremy Clarkson's effort to murder a Perodua Kalisa after buying it new and driving it onto the road. Here is a link to it if you havent seen it already!
Jeremy Clarkson annihilates the Perodua Kelisa
BTW : I'm a huge huge fan of JC ; my son Jeremy will agree...
Ok so; after I got the alloys and tyres installed on day one; the next in line was the grille. I pulled the silver tooth off and it was looking better, but wasnt excited. ( pic below)
My initial thought was to square of the vertical slats and mesh it from behind; like some after-market jobs on some Cherokees. (Pic below). Maybe someone can try that.
In the weekend we took out the grille to fix the horn; it was astonished to see that the hideous grille was covering a well formed cavity for the radiator; I did drive around without the grille for a few days; it looks neat! I thought I should get a neat metal frame to fit perfectly in the cavity and get it meshed and took the only-days-old Bolero into a supposedly "great" tinker shop in Chennai. The "super tinker" had a Bolero work in progress, some rich dude was getting his Bolero sportz converted to a one and half cab pick up; an extensive modification; and i was quite excited thinking of the perfect gleaming grille he would conjure up for me.
I was asked to leave the car in and come after 4 days; I did and found he had cut a few pieces of GI sheet precisely and my new car had gathered half an inch of dust; I was feeling quite sad. Excitement was back again after I saw the completed frame a few days later, It looked like a perfect one. But the mesh he had bought looked more like a mosquito net to me and i was not impressed. ( I started realising then that he is not in the game of modding by choice; he was probably taking it as a business extension to his automobile engg qualification.)
Maybe i was asking for too much when i asked him to do a waterfall instead of the mesh in the newly made frame. He said it was damn easy; a wise man wouldn't say that, waterfall grill has to be PERFECT, especially the spaces between the thin pipes - even a millimeter difference would give a "lost tooth" look. Nevertheless I went home reasonably hopeful - afterall I had got a waterfall grill made by a local tinker ( aashan : popular speak for senior mechanic/tinker in kerala) for a friends LHD NISSAN years ago and it was impressive.
Back at the tinker after a day for the unveiling of the tinker's pride; I couldn't have been more dissapointed, I didnt swear too much; just told him that a tinker should know what happens when heat is applied to metal and thats it's not a child play. No Thank you and I went back; this time with the the Bolero sans grille.
I gave up on the grille and took my first long drive to Kerala; my folks back there loved the Bolero; it was the first UV in the family.
I hit our joint early next day; the bike workshop off MG road in Cochin is a magnet for petrol heads; you are sure to barge into an interesting motoring coversation anytime and witness more than a few souped up rides there. The crowd this time around was quite young and excited; nice time to ask for suggestions. Within minutes we were at the aluminium merchant in the Ernakulam market and the boys took out the exact meshes for my grille. Both Diamond patters, one with smaller holes than the other. They explained to me that a single layer mesh would look incomplete; another layer of mesh in the same pattern with smaller wholes would make it complete. So with both the pieces bagged for 300 odd bucks we hit the new cutomising shop; run by one of the guys who was a regular at the joint. He had some skilled fiberglass guys; they suggested we reinforce the original grille with fiberglass before cutting off the vertical teeth so that only the outer frame will remain. just the kind of guys needed for modding jobs, I was loving it!
No suprises; in a day they had delivered what was sought; in all of 700 bucks. I was happy!