Replacing a 2 piece 300C SRT8 front fascia

[rjkusse]

When I bought my car, the dealership had already drilled to holes in the front fascia for the license plate bracket. I removed it as soon as possible, but was left with the holes. After a failed attempt at a repair, I decided to replace the front fascia with a new one. However, DCX doesn't sell the replacement to the 2 piece fascia and if replacing it with what is called out in the parts manual, you will actually get the newer 1 piece design. Somewhere early in '06 the front fascia was changed from the 2 piece design to the 1 piece design. The 1 piece has the additional holes in the fascia below the grill which would not be the same as what the car came with (my car is on the left and the president of the club's car is on the right with the one piece front fascia; both '06s)




So, to replace it with the same front fascia, I purchased a 300S front fascia. But as I started to do the swap, I soon discovered that modifications were necessary to complete moving the lower chin from mine to the new one. Here are some pictures of the differences and the install. Hope they help if you are ever considering this.

The first major difference is where the lower spoiler goes into the bottom of the fascia. The old fascia is on the left while the new one is on the right.



Notice on the original one the outer 2 holes of the 3 on the bottom. They have been widened to accommodate the spoiler. Here is another picture of the original:



You can clearly see how the outer holes have been modified from the standard 3 holes shape. So first thing is to make the new fascia lower holes the right size to accommodate the spoiler.



Next was to cut the slots that are used to hold the spoiler in place. Please don't make the mistakes I did. I took over an hour measuring and remeasuring where this slots were supposed to be. Fortunately I measure dead on, but when installing the clips that go onto the tabs of the spoiler realized the slots were marked out on the back of the fascia. You can see the markings around the slots I had already cut.



The only ones that are not marked out are the 2 center ones. I measured down from the body line where the other slots were and marked the 2 center slots.

Next are some unnecessary tabs on the back of the lower vents where on the SRT is the location of the brake cooling ducts. Here are the tabs:



And here they are removed:



Interesting if you are into restoring older vehicles is always the factory markings. I took some pictures of the markings on the spoiler.





Next was to prepare the original lower spoiler to install on the new fascia. Took off the old mounting tape and installed some new mounting tape along the edge.



I also decided to replace the lower pan that goes from the lower cross member to the front fascia. I also had to mod that as well. The replacement is designed for the 1 piece front end. There are spacers between the front fascia and the spoiler.



Here is a picture of the original pan:



And the replacement. You can see that the front edge is straight and does not have the necessary notches to fit into the spacers.



So here is the new one cut out:



Fortunately, that is all the modding required. Here are some pics of the finished product:





All the cuts were made using a dremel and a cut-off wheel. This seemed to work quite well and gave me a lot of control when making the cuts. Hope this helps.

[Ella C SRT]

I'm going to replace the 3M tape holding these two pieces together tomorrow and it was great to find this thread.
Great write up!