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Ford Raptor Style Grill on a Ford Transit!? (How to install it!)
126K views
May 3, 2025
Today at Van Builder HQ, Nick is showing how to install a Ford Raptor Grill upgrade for his Ford Transit camper van. Tune in, this one you don't want to miss! Visit https://www.vanbuilderhq.com to learn more. Interested in buying a van? Check out https://www.odysseycustomvans.com Check out another YouTube @Mispronounced Adventures Raptor Grill Upgrade video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNILUTesNn0
View Video Transcript
0:00
[Music]
0:08
hey guys welcome back to the shop today's video is uh can be pretty fun it's raining outside it's pretty nasty
0:14
so i thought about doing a fun project i brought my personal van in here this is a 2019 ford transit
0:21
you've probably seen it in a couple of the channels videos it was one of the tours that we did
0:27
anyway i was going online and uh i noticed that there is a ford raptor
0:33
style grill over in the uk that's for sale for this van you can't purchase it in the u.s
0:39
but there's a way that you can sign up to go on ebay through a company
0:46
i'll put the link in the description below but they'll actually buy it purchase it
0:51
uh i think it's called planet express they'll purchase it on your behalf and then they'll ship to their warehouse and
0:57
then they can ship it to you in the states um so we're going to take this grill out and
1:04
we're going to place it with this guy so this thing is pretty awesome
1:11
i was blown away at the quality uh the quality is extremely nice uh on this thing
1:18
um obviously this plastic is gonna get scratched up so i'm not really worried
1:24
about that this man gets really dirty going on you know gravel roads and stuff like that
1:30
so i'm not going to paint it or do anything like that maybe in the future i might tape it off
1:35
and do like a clear coat or something like that but i already know that this thing's gonna
1:41
get dinged up so i'm not worried i just think that this thing looks really awesome
1:46
and again the build quality of this is superb uh i really wasn't thinking it's gonna
1:52
be so nice when i ordered it but yeah it's uh it's really really nice
1:57
it's so sturdy that i'm sure that you could polish this plastic back whenever it gets dinged up
2:03
um he'd be fine but we're going to do today is we're going to try to figure out how to install this there is one video from a
2:10
youtuber called mispronounced adventures he has an amazing youtube channel
2:16
i think it's highly underrated he has such great content uh he's over
2:22
the uk and i really enjoy watching his channel he's in the full build out on his ford
2:27
transit van um awesome channel you guys should definitely go over there and subscribe to it to get a lot of great ideas
2:34
uh i really like a lot of the stuff that he's done so i might leak uh his channel at the
2:40
bottom of this as well and then during the time lapse i'll talk about pricing a little bit more details
2:47
on how i actually got this grill but let's go ahead kick on the time lapse and
2:54
install this grill into the van
3:02
[Music] all right guys we're filming on the gopro today so i think we're gonna have enough
3:08
uh room on here to uh just do kind of
3:13
a little work and talk over here um a couple of things first
3:20
is uh and he actually has a video that you guys i'll link that as well
3:25
there's gonna be a bunch of links but he goes ahead and there's these little
3:30
black plastic caps up here um typical ford fashion
3:36
they're the ones that are very easy to break so just be careful with that
3:47
all right so the next step that i'm doing is again taking the rest of those clips out if you break them you can go to advanced
3:54
auto parts or autozone or like o'reilly's and they usually have like a box
4:00
just a bunch of different manufacturer clips in case you break one so that might help you out also what i'm
4:07
doing is there's three bolts that hold the top of the grille in place i'm taking them out so i can kind of flex
4:13
the top of it and get my hand behind the tab to depress it in just a second i'm going to show you a
4:20
tool that i have i've had it for years it's just a screwdriver and the tip has been
4:26
bent it's almost like a j shape and that tool is perfect for this job
4:31
you can get behind the tab and you can depress it without
4:37
damaging the plastic on the grill itself so that really helped me out um taking
4:42
this uh grill out
4:49
okay guys i've found it i don't know if you can see that little there's a little curve on the end of this
4:54
and this is a perfect tool for this job
5:01
so you can just probably make one on the vise if you can do that
5:08
we just want to push this little um just push that little tab in and it will
5:15
release the grille
5:34
you just keep checking this grill for the ones you haven't done and where their location is
6:00
so
6:12
yeah this thing is the tool man
6:32
so
6:50
it pops back in it's hilarious
7:29
[Music] okay so we've got all those we need to put some over here so
7:35
this thing does not want to pop back into place
7:53
okay so now we're on the bottom we just got let's see we got one two
7:59
three four five six eight more wow
8:05
that's a lot it's right there right there
8:32
so you can just match this up and then put it right
8:39
under
8:59
good
9:08
so what i'm gonna do i'm gonna get a piece of tape and i'm gonna tape where all the holes are
9:39
i got that one the next one is right here
9:48
next one is right here so i could protect the paint too
10:17
you
10:41
oh
10:47
[Applause]
11:14
it's kind of like that one broke i'm sure this it broke or if there's a rock it also
11:19
sounded like a rock
11:34
i'm just keeping pressure just pulling back on pressure
11:50
so
12:15
last one just going gently kind of left to right
12:21
when i'm putting the screwdriver in there
12:30
okay
12:36
oh yeah so there is a tab back behind here um so just be careful
12:43
this off
12:52
look at that we didn't break any tabs
12:57
that's awesome there's that last tab right here so what i did is i just
13:03
wiggled very slowly and popped it off okay this reveals
13:10
exactly what he was talking about so
13:15
this whole thing here here here here here here and here this has to come out
13:23
um i'm suspecting
13:29
i'm suspecting that uh he was having some trouble on this side
13:34
and i feel like it's because he did not uh cut this out you don't want to do that
13:40
because right here this is your air intake cold air duct so
13:46
you don't want to do that so what i'm going to do is i'm going to go i use this tape for you
13:52
guys since this is a learning video
13:58
this way you can see you'll be able to see where i cut on the video because sometimes the
14:05
black plastic doesn't show up too well so i'm going to cut off there i'm going to cut off there
14:15
cut off over here
14:21
over here
14:27
and then i'll just these i'm going to cut off flush what you want to use is just a multi-tool
15:14
multi-tool safety glasses yeah we'll just kind of go right around here
15:21
little clockwise pattern possibly
15:28
so [Music]
15:58
so [Music]
16:10
so
16:24
be careful about your radiator oil cooler do not cut into that you can slip and
16:29
this will go right into it [Music]
16:39
all right guys we had a big problem we had the whole grill almost fully snapped in i
16:45
don't know how i got this back off without breaking any tabs that was a miracle
16:52
so here is the issue the ground the bottom won't go all the way in
16:58
and i think the problem that he was having is that there are the three tabs you cut
17:05
off here um you got to cut off this whole tab
17:11
because what happens is the grille is hitting right here so these
17:18
little nibs right here at the be need to be shaved off so i'm gonna do that right now
17:42
okay here we go i think this will work now
17:51
[Music]
18:25
also these bottom tabs
18:31
would be better if they were kind of thinned down
18:42
yeah you're gonna have the grill much lower than you think
19:16
there's nothing else hitting that
19:35
this
20:24
okay so i'm having to push the grill down and get it in these channels on the bottom
20:41
all right
20:51
okay all right i think the bottom is in
20:57
it's not in tightly i feel i can still move it out
21:02
but it's in and it's flush so let's leave it there let's hold it as we
21:08
start popping in the top pieces maybe it'll kind of align
21:27
uh
21:59
we're flush all the way around so i mean that's good but it's not flipping
22:05
in the top so i'm gonna go ahead and i'm gonna bolt in to put the screws back in the top
22:10
and then once i do that i'll kind of bump it to see if we can get it to grab into the clips
22:24
if not i'll use this method of hiding the zip tie in the top
22:30
um and then in the bottom down here which i thought that was a pretty good idea
22:38
because this is not from ford this is a aftermarket install
22:55
so we'll do our screws first kind of same order that we took it out in
23:45
foreign
23:58
so
24:30
yeah this side's over here just looks like uh
24:38
i don't think we're gonna get
24:52
i don't think we're going to get these to clip in
25:31
all right guys i have a uh a hack for you on how to install attach that grille that we just did
25:38
so use cable clamps 3 8 and a 12 by 1
25:44
pan phillips sheet metal screw stainless steel can you see that on camera there you go
25:52
you're going to put it like this and then you're going to put it through
25:58
the grill wrap this inside the grill push this on the back with another
26:03
screwdriver and get it to bite in and then this is what you're going to do
26:11
then you can put it in there and see how that is holding the grill in
26:17
and that way you don't have to drill a screw and with the very coarse threads that are on the
26:22
sheet metal screw it's going to bite into the plastic make sure you don't over tighten it
26:28
because it will break this piece of plastic just do it enough so that you can
26:35
bring this grill in close to that seam and then that's that's enough
26:41
you'll be okay over here and over here this is just plastic
26:47
make sure you're not screwing into any piece of the
26:53
radiator or cooler you should be okay as long as you are above
27:00
this bar right here so try to get it up as high as possible i put this one
27:06
let's see one two three four in and the second one i'm gonna go one two three
27:12
i'm gonna put it right here and then what you're gonna do take this
27:18
screw goes on top so put the plastic under
27:24
like that and then take your screwdriver i can't do this with one hand
27:30
and then put it in there like that you will have to trim off this square part of the top you'll need
27:37
to 45 both of these pieces of plastic in it in order to get it in the hole
27:42
but once you do that tighten it down if you want to put a dab of black paint on it so you can't see
27:48
the screw that works
27:55
all right guys we got it in it looks really good however
28:00
after further inspection the reason that this does not
28:06
uh pop in here and here is because there is actually a curve to the grill
28:13
and this on the back edge is straight so right here there's just a mild curve but right the
28:20
hood is much more aggressive so if we look at the ford transit grille
28:29
there's much more of a curve than there is on this
28:34
uh aftermarket so these edges here
28:40
they don't push in all the way um this is not really going anywhere i'm still going to do the thing where i do
28:46
like a maybe a zip tie to pull this side in and i don't want to pull this side in
28:54
but other than that i think it looks really cool
28:59
take it off the tripod here [Music] so here you guys go
29:05
[Music] this is the uh ford raptor style grill for the ford
29:12
transit
29:19
i think it looks pretty awesome and remember all we had to do is we had
29:26
to cut off three of these little rubber pieces plastic pieces on the inside here
29:34
there's one they're right in the middle of where these openings are in the middle of there in
29:40
the middle there now over in the uk this is for a locking
29:48
mechanism to unlock the hood we don't have that in the
29:53
i think it's also possible some we can put like a front camera there that'd be pretty cool
30:02
anyway guys that is going to be it for the video hope you guys enjoyed it um if you have
30:08
any questions on this besides what i put down the description on how to purchase it let me know in the comments below
30:14
i'll be happy to answer those but uh yeah we'll see you guys in the next video
30:24
[Music]
30:34
you
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