DIY Clear Tails

[malik112099]

Here we go.....

in order to do this you have to buy the clear covers..they are here:

http://www.dreamka4u.com/products.php?id=47&op=__reader__

http://kspec.com/list.php?ac_id=84&ai_id=644

...and a few other places


first off the oven trick WILL NOT WORK (i will tell you why in the DIY). All i mostly used was a dremel and a dremel set i bought for $10 with cutting disks, and other little wierd dremeling things in it..most important for me was the cutting disks. I also used a tube of black silicone sealant also known as RTV. You might also want a pair of gloves and crappy clothes cause you can cut yourself very easily and dust from the plastic gets EVERYWHERE while you are going at it....


This is what i started with :





first i stuck a screw in the lense where i cut my first piece off and held the screw so the piece would not fall in and gouge anything up (sorry i didnt get a pic of the screw in the lense) .. i then used the cutting wheel to score the plastic of the whole lense. i found this made it easier to pull and break the lense apart. i tried without scoring it and it was WAY harder :





After you break the lense off you are left with a red border from the lense being attached to the rest of the tail light. It seems that the lense was almost melted or plastic welded on which is why the oven trick wont work. Pick your dremel bit of choice and dremel off all that excess red lense around the border.. it should look something like this when you're done:





I was going to leave mine chrome but after seeing how easily they scratched (i scratched them, its hard not to do) i decided to paint them the same color as my headlight bezels. I used painter's blue tape (low adhesive tape you can get at the hardware store) to tape off the sections i wanted to leave chrome (the parts the lights stay in). i just ran the tape on the inside lip and let some stick up out of it..i them folded the tape over and taped across to seal them up so no paint would get in:






I let them dry over night and then pulled the painter's tape off:





the clear lenses are little too big..i dont know if there is some special way they go on, or what..i tried to bend them and flex them around the tail to see how they fit, but nothign seemed to work..here you can see at the bottom corner of the light how much bigger the clear lense is:







i took a sharpie and traced along the bottom of the light and cut the excess off:





then took the backing off of the tape strips on the back of the clear tails and affixed the clears to the tail light assembly. I then went along the edges of the lense with the black silicone sealant and taped the edges so that none would get onto the lense. i then used black electrical tape to tightly hold the lense to the rest of the assembly while it dried over night:







the next day after work i peeled all the tape off and used a box cutter to cut off all the excess sealant....you can tell that some of the sealant creaped up on the bottom of the lenses, but that was mostly because i used a LOT of it just to be safe....it doesnt look bad in person cause it looks like part of the black border going around the lense.. but i suggest taping off the bottom and paint it black along the bottom border so that you cant see the sealant...so here is the finished-installed product..enjoy!










[Edited by malik112099 on Apr 26, 2005 8:14 PM]