Corvette Mods: How to Help Protect Your C8’s Radiators from Debris & Damage

Have a couple of hours of free time and simple hand tools? This grille mesh C8 Corvette mod could help protect your front-end radiators!

An unfortunate reality of owning an amazing sports car like the C8 Corvette is exposing it to potential damage just by driving it. Nobody wants to see their brand new C8 with rock chips lining the bumper, dented radiator fins, and paint missing! However, it seems that Chevy might have a little bit of an oversight with the design of the C8’s front end that could have been resolved by a simple solution: mesh grilles.

In order to keep the drivetrain cool while accommodating the C8’s revolutionary design, Chevy placed two radiators at the grille openings on either side of the front bumper. The C8 is an extremely low car even with the factory suspension when compared to your everyday road-going vehicle. This means road hazards are twice as dangerous when you have such important parts of the car so low to the ground.

CorvetteForum member Bluan realized that on his brand new 100-mile C8, he was already noticing damage to the front radiators from road debris. From the factory, these bumper grilles are left essentially open, without any type of protective mesh to prevent large debris and materials from damaging key engine components.

Well, our friend Bluan was not having that and decided to engineer a solution. It was obviously disappointing to notice issues with a car that hasn’t even had an oil change or even 1,000 miles on the odometer. His post is a comprehensive guide to creating your own set of custom mesh grille inserts for the C8 front bumper:

1. First, unlike the YouTube video asking you to use small wrench tool to work under the car in a very tight space, I decided to jack up the car to get more working space underneath, which makes the whole installation work much easier. I think it’s much better this way, because now there’s enough vertical spaces underneath that I can use power tools to unscrew and tighten the screws on the bottom cover, making the whole process less laborious and much faster:

2. To take off the bottom cover to access the space behind the front grill to insert the meshes, these are the screws you’ll need to take off:

• There are 6 of them along the edge of the cover (marked 1-16 below), and they tied to the Z51 front splitters as well. You will need a T15 screw bit to unscrew them.
• There are also 3 more (marked 7, 8, 9 below) towards the back of the cover, and unscrewing them off will make prying off the bottom cover much easier. Strangely, at least on my car, 2 of them are the same T51 screws, but 1 of them will need 7mm socket to unscrew it.
• There are also 2 crews on clips (marked green 10 and 11 below) that hinge the Z51 splitter together, and in order to make prying down the cover easier, I’d recommend to loose them up as well (but not taking them off), so the Z51 splitter is lose, easy to move around as you pry open the cover. These screws need the 7mm socket to loose them up.

3. Now, for the mesh, I printed out the template, and taped it onto a cardboard, and then overlay it on top of the mesh sheet to prepare for the cut of the mesh sheet. As it turned out, the length of the template, fits almost exactly the width of the mesh sheet, so I decided to cut it that way by laying the template cross the mesh sheet, to save as much mesh sheet as possible, so I can use the same sheet to also make extra ones for the two center pieces:

4. To mark on the mesh sheet where to cut, use a chalk that can be easily wiped off would be best. I didn’t have a chalk handy, so I borrowed my wife’s fabric chalk to do the marking:

5. With the chalk marking clearly visible, now we can easily cut the mesh sheet. I just use a metal sheet scissor to cut the mesh, and it’s very easy to do it this way, and there’s no need to use other power tools such as Dremel as other suggested before:

6. For the driver side mesh, there’s a cutout for accommodating the fronk switch, so I first use the scissor to cut it, but then there’s some sharp edges and wires from half cut hexagon sticking out. So to prevent them cutting myself later, I put the mesh on an anvil and used a file to smooth off the sharp edge and wires, so it won’t scratch hand skin or finger when putting hand under there to use the frunk opening switch.

As you can see, the cut off edge is now smooth and nothing sharp sticks out. By doing so, it save me the trouble to go buy another plastic or rubber tube to cover that opening. Of course, if you have a small tube handy, you can cut one side of a tube and use that as the edge smoother on the cut off, but since I don’t have a right sized tube, I just used file to smooth the edge, and it works out great.

8. Here I have both the center and side pieces of the mesh for the driver’s side grills, both made and ready to be installed:

9. On the car, after the bottom cover screws are removed, just pry open the plastic bottom cover from the Z51 splitter, and pull it down to open the cover. If your C8 doesn’t have the Z51 option, it should be even easier – once the screws are off, you should be able to just pull the cover down and open – but notice that the cover is above the metal body cover edge, so you’d need to pull it hard to dislodge it. Once it’s open, it now exposes the space or the gap behind the front grill, where you can now insert the protective mesh into it:

10. It would be easier to install the center piece first, since you want to use the space in front of the side grill to move about the mesh. If you installed the side mesh first, it will likely making inserting the center piece harder, since you won’t be able to stick you fingers behind the grill. So this is what I did: install the center mesh first, and then the side mesh.

Now, here’s the trick that no one has mentioned, nor in the YT videos: put the zip ties on the mesh first before you insert it behind the grill. After you insert the mesh behind the grill, it’s hard to put on the zip ties, because there’s not enough space for you to put your hand behind it to thread the zip ties, and it would be very difficult to thread the zip tie from outside of the mesh after it is installed in place. This is something that the YouTube videos never explained, and I found out the hard way. So, my solution is, to make it easier, put the zip ties on the mesh first, by first putting the mesh in the front of the grill to see the estimated location where I want to tie the mesh, and then insert the zip ties onto the mesh at these locations:

11. As you can see, once the mesh is inserted behind the grill, the zip ties are already on the mesh, and you can then simply thread them and tie them up, without having to fight over threading the zip tie from behind the mesh:

12. After tied the center piece, do the same for the side piece: putting the mesh in front of the grill and find out where you want to use the zip tie, and then putting the zip ties on the mesh in advance before you inserting it. I put 4 zip ties to secure the mesh, and if you want to use more you can, but I think 4 is good enough – they are very strong to hold the mesh in place:

13. Here are the result: both the center piece and the side piece of the protective mesh are now installed. Yes, you can see the zip tie knobs if you look very closely, but I think they are obscure enough and hard to see, it’s totally fine just use them to tie the mesh onto the grills, rather than more extra work to remove the horizontal grill and side cover first to try to hide the zip ties, as I think it’s not really worth the troubles for a diminished return of hiding something hard to see in the first place. At distance, no one will ever notice the zip tie knobs, frankly.

14. Now, we’ll do the passenger side: we will first need to pry open the bottom cover first like the driver side. Again, under the car body, you will need to remove 6 T15 screws on the Z51 splitter (1-6 below) (or on the front of the car body if you don’t have the splitter, and 3 more in the back (7-9 below – 2 T15, 1 17mm), and loose up the 2 screws (17mm) on the Z51 splitter linkage clip(10-11) (if you have the Z51 option):

15. Here are the meshes for the passenger side, center piece and side piece. The side piece doesn’t have that cut out for fronk switch as on the driver side, so they are a bit easier to cut.

16. Like what I did for the driver side, I also put the zip ties on the mesh first before inserting them behind the grill. Here you can see after the side mesh is inserted. Notice that I had more than 4 zip ties, and that’s because I threaded some extra ones at slightly different location, so I can use the one that fit the best, and just pull off the ones I don’t use.

17. Here both the center piece and the side piece of the meshes on the passenger side are installed, and again, I installed the center piece first, and then the side piece, as it’s easier to do it in that sequence. The zip tie knobs are hardly noticeable if you don’t look closely, so save yourself some extra work and troubles from trying to remove the grill front cover and side cover just trying to hide the zip ties 

18. Here is the final result: all 4 pieces of protective meshes are installed. They look great, as the black hexagon shape holes look identical to the mesh GM used above the engine, so it’s a very consistent style.

Installing the protective mesh this way, by purchasing a mesh sheet and cut it yourself, rather than buying already made mesh for the C8, has a few advantages:
– First, you pay less in total for making your own mesh covers;
– Yet you have more mesh materials available which you can then also cut the extra center pieces. It’s better that you cover all 4 opening spaces behind the front grill, as the two center openings are the inlet for the breaker systems, and if you can put a mesh in the front to prevent stones flying into breaker system, it would be better. Since you are doing this work any way, might as well getting all 4 pieces installed, so you can have a peace of mind once you are done.
– This is also better than buying the ones that someone sells for you to stick them from the front, which covers up the grill. This method leave the grill design in full view, doesn’t cover up or diminish GM’s front grill design.

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We recommend this mod to new C8 owners that may have some extra time on their hands and know how to use them. You will need to still do the work yourself, but Bluan was kind enough to make both the centerpiece mesh and the side grille mesh template available for download HERE. Not only will this small change help protect your investment, but it also makes the whole front end look a lot better. Stay safe C8 owners!

Photos: CorvetteForum member Bluan

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