Originally Posted by stevedood

huck...

I would recommend that you pick a wire dia b/t 0.050" and 0.100" and then see what density of meshes you can get. The %open area will let you figure out how much flow reduction you'll get....the opening width will tell you which rocks will get through. You are obviously going to obstruct the flow and something around 40%OA should be OK, I wouldn't go less than that.
A tight mesh with a large wire diameter would look pretty close to the Jaguar front end. If you have gold wheels (which I can't recall on your white Rex), then some brass mesh would look pretty cool and wouldn't tarnish much.

For shaping the mesh: I recommend making a wood "tool" out of some scrap 2x4's. Nail a few together to make a rectangular shape larger than the grill scoop. Use a piece of cardboard beforehand to get the right shape before tracing it onto the wood. Trim the perimeter of the wood to loosely fit into your mesh location (either the upper/radiator scoop b/t the headlights or the lower/condenser/fmic scoop). Get a pair of compound tin snips (I have some you can borrow) and cut the mesh with an extra 2-3" around the perimeter. Get a brass or rubber mallet ( i also have one you can borrow) and start to "shape" the mesh over the wood tool - think Jesse James when he's making his gas tanks (minus the english wheel). After a bit of work you'll figure out what it takes to shape the stuff. Sometimes a pair of leather gloves and a bit of elbow grease will get the geometry perfect. Then clean up the perimeter edge after it's been bent over and test fit the mesh into the grill. You can buy some rubber edge gasket at McMaster and use that to cover the edges of the mesh and keep the mesh from scratching the grill when installing as well as cutting down on vibration at speed. Black Zip ties work nice for securing the mesh to the grill and you can always drill a few hidden holes if you don't have good spots to zip tie it in.
Hope this works and let me know if you need help.

-steve

Originally Posted by aups

you mom's ***

Originally Posted by huck

^ Damn Steve, you the man.

Quick question. I'm mainly finding square mesh under 316 stainless mesh. Don't I want a hexagonal or diamond shaped mesh? or am I missing something?

Originally Posted by stevedood

Yup, square mesh is what you want. Diamond mesh is just expanded metal and I think the hexagonal mesh is a 3-axis, 120 degree deal...I didn't think they had that in stainless but I could be wrong. Now that I think about it, I think the haxagonal stuff is just chicken wire if I remember correctly. If you look at the catalog pages (in PDF), you can probably find what you are looking for quicker than going through their query engine.

I considered actually making them for BAIC members but I think then I'd have to be a vendor and pay up to Alex. I also thought about getting some stainless sheet metal laser-cut with a grill-like pattern, maybe oval cutouts, flames, whatever and with tabs to bend over for mounting in the lower scoop. Laser cutting is pretty cheap too. Behind the the laser cut stainless grill, I would use a finer mesh (30 mesh), held in place with rivets and a retaining frame. I even started to model it up in CAD but never followed-through. Pretty bling, though.

For my WRX, I used hexagonal perforated metal, and formed a rectangular section with a concave face so it's sits back in the lower scoop (powder coated flat black). Between the headlights, I used the Sti Genome grill with the same hex perf behind it (instead of the ghetto mesh they gave me). WREXR saw it at the one MVINO meet I saw you guys at. It has a subtle look, all black.
On my old VW, I did the formed stainless mesh that I described above and it came about sweet. There's something cool to be said about raw stainless, it's lustre, etc. If you decide to powdercoat, make sure you shape it first.