[JohnIL]

Yesterday was fun! Fall is coming on in Central Illinois and I thought we had run out of warm garage days. But, yesterday, we experienced a warm snap and I got the opportunity to spend the day on a project I thought would have to wait until spring.

A few weeks ago, on a lark, I ordered a chrome grille, front bumper, headlight bezels, and marker light bezels from LMC. The truck left the factory with white painted bumpers, grille, etc. The previous owner painted them black. He was was going for a blacked out hot rod look. That look is definitely better than five shades or rust, but it's not my style. I'm a sucker for chrome. That's the whole reason I love '50's and '60's vehicles in the first place. The C10 definitely needed some shiny bits up front.

I'm about 85% happy with the quality of the parts from LMC. The finish is good. Chrome is smooth and bright. But, like most aftermarket parts, the fit leaves a bit to be desired. The bumper, headlight bezels, and marker light bezels all fit well, but the grille was a pain in the neck.

I purposely used the factory headlight buckets. Since those are the mounting points for the grille, I reasoned that the grille would fit OK, as long as the headlight buckets fit. That assumption would have been correct, if the grille was the right shape.

The first problem was that the mounting holes in the grille did not line up with the headlight buckets. After enlarging the holes a few sizes, I got three out of the four holes on each bucket to line up. On both sides, the fourth hole was so far off, that it missed the edge of the bucket entirely. Three out of four ain't bad, right?

The second, and much larger problem, was that the grille didn't match the shape of the truck's front end. The front valance panel is more-or-less flat. But, the headlight buckets mount at an angle on both sides. The ends of the factory grille angle back to match the buckets. The aftermarket chrome grille doesn't appear to angle back at all. It's much flatter than the factory grille. So, when I bolted the passenger side bucket in place, the driver side bucket was about 3/4" out from the front valance panel. There was enough flex in the grille to pull it back into place, but it was a struggle to get the mounting bolts started. Once it was mounted, everything lined up well, but I really didn't like the idea of flexing/bending it to fit.

With all of the shiny chrome, the front of the truck looks MUCH better. I'll tackle the bumper next spring. That will be a bit more involved, because the towing bumper is welded to "custom" brackets that are welded to the rear of the frame. I plan to grind everything back down to the frame and mount either a factory chrome sport bumper or, maybe, a '67-'72 chrome bumper instead. I'm not quite sure which look I like better.