In a different thread, you both posted pics showing the grill recessed back into the air opening. I really like this look. Markman, you said that you "moved the aluminum bumper back so that grill could be mounted further in." How did you move the aluminum bumper back? Thanks in advance for your help.

 

Is this the look you are trying to get ??

 

There are a few ways you can do it, on US spec cars you have a much larger bumper beam with the aluminium brackets, you will need to move or remove these and you will also need to cut the overriders off.

I would cut off all the necessary pieces from the bumper beam and then get yourself some black drain pipe about 3" diameter, 2ft long(ish). Cut a 2" wide strip out of the pipe along its length, you will then find you can pull the pipe open and this will fit over the top of the original beam and cover up the mess you made cutting off the over riders and various bits, you can simply screw the pipe into place with some black trim screws.

Now this is where it gets tricky, you will need a way of securing the grille to the car, you can either use P clips and fit them to the bumper itself. The problem with this is because you have now fitted the grille to the back you will see screw heads holding the P clips, I have made a feature of them in the past and used some polished stainless button heads, gave it a bit of a race look. If you don't want that you will need to fix the grille to the bumper beam, this will require some packing pieces for the grille to sit against to hold it in the correct position, I would use some round black plastic, drilled through, so you can screw through the grille through the packing pieces and into the original bumper beam.

I have to admit I am guessing a little here as in the UK we do not have the aluminium sections on our bumper beams

Good luck

 

Jaxkr....yep, thats the look. How did you achieve it?

XKRacer, thanks for the info. I did pretty close to what you explained with my XK8 (see pic). Markman mentioned moving the aluminum bumper back and in his picture it appears that he retained the bumperettes. The picture of Jaxkr's car looks like it has the bumperettes as well. I'm trying to figure out if there is a way to move the whole bumper including the bumperettes back as markman indicated in his post.

 

I removed the aluminum bumperettes from the center & left the 2 outer ones on. The grille I have is the later style Jaguar grille from 2005 onwards cars.