Ok, I’m off the phone and back on the tablet. Posting on an iPhone is not easy. Here’s my conclusions. I inspected all my grills when I received them. I have 7. Two friends bought grills and they had no issues. I bought one of those at a later date and inspected it. I saw no issues. The trim fits nice. Only five of them have the BEA trim. NOW, there is no doubt that the lower trim on the grill is different than oem. It does not have the same .050 difference to make it conform to the grill like the oem trim does on an oem grill. I looked at my BEA AAR grill and compared it to an oem argent grill with oem trim and there was only a very slight difference in the visible angle upward on the BEA. If I was not looking for it, I would not have seen it. Surprisingly, once the headlight buckets are installed, I could not noticed the difference in angles. I refer back to my oem grills and the figment on them can be pretty poor.
Now, the reason the bottom trim is different, I can only guess. Maybe the same top trim was used for the bottom. Maybe the extra cost of the tooling for a completely different trim was not worth the extra small detail. I do know that there must be 1000 different details that we never see in the production of such a piece. Plastic injection is not easy. As much as I like to buy American and avoid the Chinese parts. I realize this part would cost 5 times as much made in the USA and STILL may have shortcuts. The factory had unlimited resources and revisions to get it usable. They did not get it perfect for sure. Notice the angle of the fit between both my oem grills and the headlight bucket. It’s not straight.
So, I’m glad BEA made these grills. I had enough oem grills in good shape to fill my needs but used grills would be $4000 by now and NOS $10,000. Many cars would have bad grills. I’m satisfied with all my purchases from BEA. I’m sorry that you apparently got a bad lower trim from them. The bug in the paint problem, I can’t see in your pictures. It may have been damaged in packing or shipping. I’ve had both. I don’t know if one of BEA employees was having a bad day when he packed it. All this stuff I can only speculate.
I hope you see that I have not been biased against you for your post about your grill. The internet can be rather inpersonable because we are not looking each other in the eye. YOU HAVE A LEGITIMATE GRIP ON YOUR ILL FITTING TRIM. It somehow got tweaked. I handle things like my Dad, I’m pretty thick skinned and hard to insult. You did not really like me taking up for BEA. I did not disrespect you and examined all the facts on my end. I hope this does not end up in more controversy. However, I can only deal with this in my attitude. I can’t get between you and Mike Ross. I don’t know your personality. I do know a little about Mike. By his own admission, he can be a little gruff. If you approached him in a less than pleasant way, things may have went badly from the start. I’ve been in situations that could have gotten nasty in a heartbeat but I chose a milder response and it all worked out fine. I’ve got a good friend who will never learn. He can make preacher so mad, the preacher will start cussing! Lol. He refused to remove his hat at a nice restaurant in Columbus and got mad at the waitress and left without eating! He flipped off a trucker for tailgating and the trucker literally ran him off the road. I give him a hard time and call him flipper just to hear him complain. I’m not saying this about you, by no means. just making a point that people’s personalities sometimes clash.
So, my final thought. For some reason, your bottom trim does not fit. All five of mine fit nicely. I hope you can get it fixed or figure something out. If their is any way I can help, I’ll try to do that. I hope I’ve handled this in a diplomatic way we have no hard feelings.
Mark