Unfortunately the only way to remove the two upper plastic chrome strips from the grill is to cut the tabs on the inside. When you open the hood, look from the inside and you will see what I'm talking about. There are about 8 or so straight plastic tabs that are pushed through and then melted on the inside so that the strips cannot be pulled out from the front. I just took some side cutters and went to town when I did mine. Hopefully you do realize that you will need to put them back on once you are done doing whatever(painting?) you are going to do with them, otherwise you will have rectangular holes in your grill.