How I put the front emblem on the back of my truck.
-First, you have to remove the 3 piece emblem. I heated up the emblem with a heat gun. I eventually pried off the emblems and left some of the double sided tape adhesive on the truck. There are many detailed methods over the internet on how to remove the emblems on a factory vehicle.
- Next, I needed to clean up the adhesive. For this I used an adhesive rubber wheel with the drill attachement. Not my go to but I was trying to hurry up before my wife asked me to bring her lunch at work. The adhesive wheel left some rubber due to heat buildup. I used a polisher and some compound to clean it up proper.
- Now you have the clean slate to work with. I put tape down as my next step was to find center on the tailgate. The highest strip of tape was used to keep the line of the factory emblems, I later adjusted this as it seemed it was off
- Now for me, this was the most difficult step. I took my pliers to the clips on the back of this $300 emblem. Just grab and twist, they come off almost flat. I followed it up with a grinder and flap wheel to make sure it laid flat.
- From here, I laid more tape down to cover the surface area of the emblem. The toughest part of this is trying to line the emblem up close to level. I spent time on this as I believe it is the make or break part of the process. Once I had it where I thought it was good, I pressed down on the emblem so that the plug in the back of the emblem would indent the tape. The emblem should be parallel to the tailgate when looking from above, down.
- If you pressed hard enough, you will see the outline of the plug in the tape. Weirdly enough, this next step was less stressful then popping clips off an emblem. I drilled a .5 inch hole in the tail gate in the center of the indentation. This is not enough and I inked in the rest of the outline and filed smaller holes to the corners. I did raise the emblem up toward the handle (?) due to it being the multi pro and there is a crease on the inside that may cause an issue if you keep factory placement. It’s moved up about .5 -.75 inch from factory placement. I did not want to chance it.
- From here, I took a small triangular file and took the time to file the eventual square flat all around. This step took me about 30 minutes. I had a die grinder, but could not find my bit. It could have taken 5 minutes if that...
Above is the measurements I took.
- I kept test fitting the emblem, turns out I had to open it up more to account for the base of the plug on the emblem. I would venture to guess 13/16 or 7/8s.
- After I got enough after multiple test fits, I was happy with it. The hole will be covered up with the emblem.
- I pulled all the tape off except the highest one so I could know my center line. With both the emblem and tail gate prepped.. I found the emblem has more of a curve then the tailgate. The curve looked real similar before I ventured to do this.
Nothing a quick press in the middle wouldn’t take care of.
- Next I loaded the emblem with 3M double sided tape. Turns out, that it is actually difficult to peel the backing off to actually mount the emblem. Luckily it’s curve helped me only tack the sides on while I measured center, up/down and left to right. Boom... mounted..
- I cut the end of the pig tail that comes with the emblem. Plugged it in, and ran wire through the tailgate to the wiring harness of the passenger side tail light. I actually took the tail light off but realized there is another plug point by the spare tire. That’s where I wired in the emblem to come on with the lights like the front does.
Forgive my spelling errors, did this from my phone. As much as I tried to take pictures, once I got into the mode, all that went out the window.