Cervini Lower Grille C-Series Textured Matte Black EcoBoost/ GT 2018-2022

While I'm already a fan of the front of the 2018 Mustang, today we're gonna make it look even better with help from Cervini.

These are the Cervini C series grilles fitting your 2018 Mustang GT or EcoBoost. These are available separately, but in our case we're going to install them together because we feel they really look good as a package. These are gonna come in a black textured matte black finish with grilles that are powder coated black, and they'll be a direct replacement for your factory grilles. These will provide much more airflow to your engine, give you a great look, and are made right here in the USA.

For this installation you'll need: a lift or a jack and jack stands; 1/4" ratchet; 5.5MM socket; 7MM socket; 8MM socket; 7/16" socket; 10MM shorty wrench; clip removal tool; panel removal tool; Philips head screwdriver; flat head screwdriver; and scissors.

To install Cervini's grilles will require us to remove our front bumper, but it's not as bad as it sounds. We're gonna start underneath here, remove a whole bunch of these 7MM screws and a couple of clips, and then move up to the wheel wells.

The screws are removed, there's a couple of these plastic clips in the back here.

Now these can be got from the wheel well or underneath, they're just easier for us to get right here. Remove these three, and then these two up there.

Okay I'm going forwards, there's another one of the push button style ones here. Just push the center in, pop out. The last piece of hardware's gonna be behind the splash shields. What you do is get a grip on the splash shield and sort of work it out, sort of under the fender. But it's nice and flexible. Just bend it out. These two nuts come off here. I do wanna mention this is a really nice change from Ford. This was a problem area in the 2013 through 2017, but it's a much beefier design on the 2018.

The nuts come off, push the little bracket through. And the bumper will separate.

With everything loose down below we can move up top. We're gonna move now to cover for the radiator support. With the cover off we're gonna remove all these screws now across the top. They have these little alignment pins up here so you kinda want to lift the bumper up carefully to get over these. And you can pull away from the car and unplug it.

Now the next step is gonna vary depending on what model you have. If you have a performance pack like I do you do not have the shutter system so you're gonna skip that step and move onto this. If you do have a shutter system you have to remove it and then move onto the next step. In the case of performance pack, because we don't have a shutter system, Cervini include these brackets that are gonna install right down here on the edges. Basically what that's gonna do is support this. Start by taking the provided j-clip, put it right on here, over that open hole. Put the bracket up to the place. Tighten that down. Now get the supplied clip, line it up at the hole on the side there. And just screw or push it on. Do the same thing on the other side.

There's a few more modifications we have to make before we can start the actual installation. Right here behind the bumper, we have these gray plastic wire clips. Use a panel removal tool and just separate them from the bumper. With these clips removed from the bumper, now we're gonna remove them from the harness. Just separate these tabs and pull them off.

The next step here is really optional and kind of depends on what color your car is. Now in the case of my car obviously being bright red, if you have a bright red, bright orange, whatever. Cervini includes decals that cover part of your bumper here and here, so you don't see the bright red through the grille. If you have a black car or dark gray car, this part you could probably skip because no one will ever notice. But if you have a brighter color like the red, the orange or a white, you probably wanna install these. We're gonna take a little alcohol, just clean the area before we install them.

Once the decals are installed you're gonna reconnect the harness you moved earlier using the supplied zip ties.

With all the prep work done, now we can start actually doing the grille installation. Get your bumper up high, this will definitely be a two person job. We're gonna start by removing the crash bar here, and this will go back on later. It's held in place by these little clips. Using a flat head screwdriver you kinda wanna pop the clips up to release them.

With the crash bar off, now we can actually remove the grilles themselves. This is easier if you have two people. What you're gonna do is kinda push up on these clips and have somebody push from the other side, it makes it a little bit easier. What you're gonna do is just start from one direction, sort of go slowly. Sometimes can be a little bit stubborn.

All right now, same process with the lower. First ones are the hardest ones to get. Once you get them it will get a little bit easier.

Now we're ready to begin the actual installation of the bumper. What you're gonna do is push it through from the front, get everything lined up. And then you're gonna use the silver tabs, and what's gonna happen is basically these tabs are gonna go like that. They're gonna hold the bumper to it, and use the provided screws to put it in place. You're gonna start by putting the screws in lightly and then we'll tighten them up later.

Then we're gonna repeat the process on the lower. Basically the exact same idea, get the grille in here into place, then install the clips and screws. Like I said, same process with the lower. The one thing to be careful with if you are doing both at once like we are, the black clips are for the lower grille, silver clips are for the upper grille. They are different so you'll have problems if you do interchange them.

When you're doing the lowers, if you don't have a stubby screwdriver or a good right angle screwdriver to get in there, you can actually just pull this off, there's a whole bunch of 7MM. But if you have a short stubby and you can get in there it's a lot easier than taking the whole thing off. Make sure you get them all started before you tighten anything down, just to make sure they all do lineup.

Repeat the process with the other five grilles. Now since we installed the upper and lower grille we don't have the factory clips to hold this in place. This is the eight mile an hour bumper that's included with the car. So what we're gonna do is clean this surface here, here, and over here, and just install it with some double stick tape.

All right we're ready to put this bumper back on. Make sure these little tabs here are on the bottom, and it will be a little bit of a tight fit. Just line it up straight.

Okay we're ready to reinstall the bumper. Don't forget the first thing we wanna do is plug in the harnesses. Carefully put it up into place. Now we're just gonna reassemble everything we took off earlier. Start with the screws up top here.

Screws installed, reinstall the cover. Okay we're gonna carefully line this up here. And reinstall the nuts. Now we can reinstall the push pins. We wanna put the push pins in here as well. And the last step, reinstall all the screws from underneath that we removed earlier. And your installation is finished.

The Cervini C series upper lower grille looked great on the front of my 2018 Mustang GT and fixed one of the most annoying things in my opinion about this car, it's the fact that the upper was gloss and the lower was matte. Just looks better than factory, it's much cleaner looking overall. There's a couple of things I should mention here. When we had this apart I did paint my radiator black because I wanted more of a blacked out look, and also if you have a safe and smart package or the adapted cruise control you cannot use the lower grille. You can still do the upper, but you have to leave your factory lower grille. As far as the installation figure I'd say two to three hours, be back on the road in no time.