Debris Protection for Fresh Air Cowl

While I was in the process of working through my list of things to do and waiting for the paint to dry on the rear differential cover, I decided to take a few minutes for a simple project. Adding some screening to the Vent Cowl.

The basic process was to remove the cowl grill, insert the screen, and replace the grill. Uh, right.

Have I ever mentioned my life motto? Well, it basically boils down to this, "Nothin's ever easy!"

Removing the grill is simple enough with the right tool and a little force. It's essentially held on by these little metal clips. Be prepared fish these clips out of the vent box as they will likely fall. I used a magnet to reach mine.

Anyway, once the grill is off you just place the screen over the vent opening and position the grill back into place. The problem is keeping the grill in place. With screen in the way you cannot reuse the clips so you have to take another approach.

Some forum posts suggested using car emblem/badge grommets. This is a good idea if you have some laying around or want to wait for them to arrive from Amazon or other online marketplace. I decided to try using plastic drywall anchors. I have piles of these all over the house. I found a set that fit nicely over the grill stems so I trimmed them and moved to step 5 or 6 in the process. (who's counting anyway)

In order for the anchors to fit the holes on the cowl panel I had to enlarge them. So, out comes the drill. After a few tries with various sized bits, voila! the anchors fit just right. Repeat for other holes and now we're ready to fit the grill back into place.

So I put the screen over the hole being sure to align it with the new plastic anchors, then I positioned the grill, nudging it past the wiper, and with a few taps with my rubber mallet, it's all done.

Looks nice! And now I don't have to worry about leaves and junk getting into the vents.

All in all this process had only taken about 3 days, most of which was just thinking about how to avoid ordering the emblem grommets. :-) The actual process was about 30 minutes.