After pulling a lot of grass, weeds and leaves outta my fog lights, upper grill and where the lower grill would be if I had one this weekend, I have bumped new grills up a bit on my priority list. This was all from slow driving on an old trail that is no longer open to the public due to irresponsible ATVers. And I do have permission to use it to camp. It used to be in good shape but in the last coupla years has become very grown up. I say this to curtail the "Why the **** are you driving someplace stupid like that?" questions. Okay, I have a few questions: The hood scoop and lower grill (area) have no grill and the upper grill is a very open honeycomb. The alternatives seem to be GrillCraft or DIY mesh. But since Subaru left these so open would an aftermarket grill setup adversely effect the cooling of the car? How about the fog lights: would they be prone to heat trouble or do the grills cut so much light so as to make them useless? And the last question (for the moment) would be If the answers to these questions change when I put a skid plate on? Oh, and the car is an 02 WRX Wagon that is stock except for rotors and pads.
id say that the mesh light covers decrease the foglights by maybe 20 percent...its worth buying them unless you wanna blow 100 bucks on a new foglight (lesson learned) and no there arent any problems with heat..oh and spend the extra cash for the paint matched ones otherwise they look ghetto like taras'
nice, what ever:roll:. I have authentic sti ones but they are not mesh so i cant use my fogs with them. I was thinking about colormathing them later.
I have mesh foglight covers on my car, and they work pretty well. There are a couple of bits of paint missing from one that I assume would probably have lead to a cracked light had they not been there.
I did say it right, its MESHED meaning it has mesh in it not MATCHED! So i am not butchering anything here!!!
Okay, summary: Fog Light grills = good. Any input on the upper/lower grills or the hood scoop? It seems they would protect parts a little more pricey than the fog lights and therefore have the potential to do more damage if they are a bad idea... I suppose being a car in stock config and not driving all crazy-like, airflow for cooling may not be as big a deal?
Oh, my bad, I didn't see where you said MESHED anywhere. Let me look over the two posts again... OH, so you have the MASHED ones on your car. Awesome. Well, after further review, you're wrong. Not only did you never say MESHED, but you also said you have authentic STi covers which are NOT mesh. And no, I'm not an english teacher, I'm just tired of having to put on the idiot decoder ring to read posts around here.
Ok, i will have to make this clear. I said i have both the Sti ones that are not mashed and i have ebay ones that are mashed.
I had DIY grills in the scoop and lower bumper opening on my 04 and never had cooling issues. Hopefully this answers your question while we sit back and watch the crazies.
After losing a fog light to a pebble a while back, I learned my lesson... those things are damn spendy. Now I've got that clear X-pel lense protection film covering all frontal lights, including the fogs. Been working great for 3 years now and you hardly know they are there. They're pretty thick and seem supple enough to bounce off pretty good sized pebbles too. It has no blockage of light either like with a mesh/full covering, and your lenses stay nice and clear without clouding up from little rock chips and whatnot. I got the 3M clear-bra stuff on the front edge of the hood/roof/side mirrors too. 6 year old car now with no chips in the hood :biggrin: Mesh for the hood scoop would be a good idea though, been finding dead wasps, leaves and stuff on the IC lately. I peeled some genuine JDM dead moths off the IC before I installed it too :laugh:
for the very bottom open grill area i just made my own mesh by using 1/2 square chicken wire and put a thin strip of lead all teh way around, then i put it in place and used caulking to seal it in place. it hasnt bent or come loose yet for me and its cheap to do. same thing with fog light covers. if you want MESHed.
