Razor Grill Swap - '91 Waggy

[MtnYJ]

The stock grill on the Waggy was pretty much trash, and was only held on by the center top bolt and a couple of screws on the sides below the headlights. All the rest of the plastic tabs were broken off... The bezels and headlights themselves, along with the grill insert are the only salvageable parts. If anyone wants them PM me.

The boss-lady and I have always liked the look of the Razor grill better than the late model grill, and the fact that it's metal made it a no-brainer swap.

This swap has been done by plenty of folks, everyone seems to do it a little differently. I've read about folks building extended tabs, welding new sections of metal onto the fascia, and combining the square buckets and round buckets to make the tabs line up with the holes. Here's our take on the project; the gist is to re-locate the Razor grill tabs on the Razor buckets to the location of the tabs on the square headlight buckets...

Parts for the swap:

Razor Grill
Razor Bezels
Round Headlights and bucket assemblies
Self drilling sheet metal screws
Rivet gun & rivets
Bench vice
Hammer

First remove the stock square headlight bezels and grill. On our Jeep this pretty much just involved pulling on it. A stiff breeze may have also worked!


Remove the square headlight and bucket assemblies and label TOP on the portion of the bucket that has the tabs attached to it; it's the round section of the bucket assembly.


There are 3 sheet metal tabs that hold the late model grill on at the bottom - these need to be removed in order for the Razor grill to fit. I used a 4 1/2" angle grinder; try not to mess up the surrounding sheet metal too much, but if you do don't worry, this area will be covered by the new grill.

May have taken the picture and done the cutting in the wrong order here, but you get the idea...




If your Jeep had the overhead compass/thermometer you'll need to relocate the sensor. Our overhead unit is broken, but I thought I'd relocate the sensor just in case it decides to spontaneously function one day.

[MtnYJ]

This is the do as I say, not as I do part. I did all the headlight work before fitting the razor grill, which I think was a mistake - it only cost time, so it's not that big of a deal. I do think that doing the grill install before the headlight fitting might result in slightly better alignment of the headlights in the bezels.

The grill install is pretty straight forward; bolt the grill in at the top with the large bolts from the late model grill. You'll then be able to push the bottom of the grill up against the Jeep - using the existing holes in the razor grill as templates, use your self drilling sheet metal screws to make new holes in the Jeep and secure the bottom of the grill.

Now on to the headlight work...

The round portion of the stock square bucket assembly you removed earlier will become a template for the headlight portion of the project.

Take the square assembly to the work bench and remove the headlight from the bucket. Once you have just the metal parts its time to get out the grinder. You need to remove ALL the rivets from the square bucket assembly, including the rivets holding the adjusters on.



Carry a fully assembled round headlight bucket assembly over to the gaping round hole in your Jeep, where you used to have a square headlight. When you hold the bucket up to the Jeep you'll see that 3 out of the 4 holes are way off. The one that is very close will become your "key" for aligning the "template" with the round headlight bucket. MARK it carefully. If you don't mark it, you'll end up using the wrong hole as the alignment hole, ask me how I know! This is also a good time to mark TOP on the back of the round bucket - this will also help you get everything located correctly...







You don't have to get as carried away with the paint marker as I did. All you need is some sort of mark.

Go ahead and remove the round headlight from the bucket if you haven't already, to keep it from getting damaged, and to make the rest of the work easier.

Set your marked up round bucket on the bench with your template and mark the template with the alignment hole corresponding with the mark you made on the round bucket.

[MtnYJ]

Next is to remove the headlight mounting tabs from the Razor bucket. DON'T REMOVE THE ADJUSTER OR BEZEL ATTACHING TABS!!!!!

Grind the head off the rivets






The square headlight bucket template next to the "de-tabbed" round headlight bucket.

[MtnYJ]

Set the template on top of the round headlight bucket, use a 3/16" drill bit inserted in both alignment holes to help get it all lined up




Next, you need to mark where the three new holes will be drilled in the back of the round bucket - there's only three because you'll reinstall a tab in the stock hole you've used for alignment. Use whatever works for you, we happened to have Q-tips and a paint marker laying on the bench so that's what I used...




Once you have the locations marked, it's time to drill. I started with 1/16" pilot holes to try and limit how much I would distort the bucket. The final hole size is 13/64".

[MtnYJ]

Once the holes are drilled it's time to reattach the tabs you removed into their new locations. You'll notice that you can't reuse the tabs exactly as they are - they have location tabs on them, and unless you're more OCD than me and created notches for them to fit into, you'll need to get rid of them. I chose to use my precision hammer, and knock them flat; took about 2 whacks per tab. Make sure you leave one of the tab's locating tab intact, you can put that one in the alignment hole.






I picked up a rivet tool and some aluminum rivets from the hardware store for this project. Worked like a champ!










For reference, here's the rivets I used

[MtnYJ]

Ok, now that you have stock tabs in their new holes it's time to take the assembly over to the Jeep and see how close you got. Don't be too upset if the tabs still don't line up exactly right.


You can correct this slight misalignment by tweaking the tabs in the bench vise. It doesn't take much. I had to squish each tab just a hair to make it longer, then flatten the screw hole area back out.

[MtnYJ]

You're done with the hard part now, all that's left is reinstalling everything and aiming the headlights. You'll notice that when you get the headlights installed in the buckets and installed in the Jeep they are slightly tilted. There's not a whole lot you can do about this, the lenses are keyed to the buckets and since you rotated the position of the tabs around the bucket the lights are slightly tilted.








Before


After


You can see the headlights aren't perfectly centered in the bezels, but for the amount of effort I'm happy with it. I'd guess that someone not "in the know" wouldn't even notice...




Thanks to Lobie for supplying the grill, bezels, headlights and buckets. I guess this is the third Jeep this grill has been on, and it's cool that some pieces of the orange beast will live on!
http://fsjnetwork.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=23

[jamesdart]

so you didn't put the tabs for the lower grill screws? just ran a long screw into the valance? I have a newer front valance to put on my 78. I placed a razor grill on it and realized there was nothing to attach the bottom of the grill to.

[MtnYJ]

There was a stock tab in the lower center of the grill, used a long 1/4" bolt there. Other than the few phillips screws you can see in the last picture there were three sheet metal screws hidden by the bezels that hold the grill on around the headlights...

[bwwhaler]

Looks great Tim, as usual, you did an excellent job doing the conversion and documenting it. Let me know when the next work day is, I want to try to come and see everybody.

[MtnYJ]

Looks great Tim, as usual, you did an excellent job doing the conversion and documenting it. Let me know when the next work day is, I want to try to come and see everybody.

It's not a work day, but you should come hang out!

http://fsjnetwork.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2901