Last year I was browsing through Mazda 3 products available for sale on eBay. I was looking for something that would give the outside of my car a custom clean look. I have always liked a clean and sleek look. I ended up finding a great looking badge-less grill with a metal mesh insert.

The price was about $50 delivered, so I went ahead and ordered it. A couple of weeks later and it was delivered to my door. Yesterday we finally had some mild weather in Mississauga, so I chose to install and review this grill.

The grill came packaged in a clear bag inside a 3′ long rectangular box. No instructions were included, so it left me with one less thing to ignore.

Project Parameters

The only tools I used was my Ryobi cordless screwdriver with a philips bit. Difficulty of this project on a scale of 1-5 is a 2. Approximate time: 10 minutes.

First order of business was to remove the old grill. This was accomplished using a Philips screw driver to remove 2 screws located above and on the outside edge of the grill (pictured below).

Once the 2 screws have been removed, you will have 4 push-down tabs located on the inside and bottom edge of the grill (pictured below with the grill already removed). You need to start on the outside edge and work your way across by pressing down on each tab and gently pulling on the outside edge of the grill at the same time. Take your time here so you don’t break your stock grill.

Now it’s time to fit the new grill. Make sure that as you position the 4 push-tabs that you pay attention to the 2 alignment tabs (pictured above). Make sure that the tabs from the grill slide in here and stay while you press in the push-tabs.

With the tabs pressed in, go ahead and screw back in the two Philips screws on the outside top edge of the grill.

There you have it your new grill is installed.

Review

After the install was complete, I noticed sizable gaps that ran along the bottom-side edge of the grill. It’s like the grill had shrunk a few millimeters after being produced. The new grill just doesn’t meet up with the bumper the same way that the original grill does. This is a normal sign of poor production tolerances.

My recommendation is to pass on this grill and look to purchase one from a reputable vendor online. Several can be found at popular Mazda3 owners forums such as TorontoMazda3.ca or Mazda3forums.com