Tech: Restoring tail lights

I was going to put the rear end of the car back together and realised the brake lights themselves could do with a touch up.

Tools Req:

Small cut down paint brush

Clean rag

Autosol

Metho

A plastic lense cleaner like PlastiX

First of all you need to remove the plastic lense from the globe retaining body.

To do this you need to pre-heat your oven to about 80'C and pop the whole unit in for a bout 5 mins. This process softens sikaflex the allowing you to seperate the two.

Once apart use metho and the brush (cut down to make the brisles rigid) to clean up what you can of the plastic lense, especially and dirt which has found it's way in there. Also give the globe retainer a going over too.

Then use the lense cleaner and a rag to restore the inside of the plastic. Remember you want to use a polishing light motion here. I found that when finished some white goo remained in the little nooks and cranies but just use the brush and a little metho again here to get rid of it.

Once the inside is complete, place the two units together so you can repete the process to the outside but not get your greasy mits all over the inside which has been cleaned.

Then give the chromed trim a wipe with Autosol to shine it up.

Reinstallation involves heating up the silkaflex again and pushing the two halves together.

Finished product. It's hard to see much difference in the shots and they weren't exactly bad to begin with but there's great potential to be had.

Cheers

If you want to take this further, wet sand with a high grit paper (1200 is good).

Then thoroughly autosol the lens, find a buffer wheel attachment for the drill works well.

You can get the lens to really shine.

I use metho on a range of cleaning as I work at a university where students tend to leave PCs and other hardware equipment in a pitiful state.

Thought i might add a side note its a little off topic but I think its a good to share this particular type of knowledge.

Metho can be used to clean other items, especially the dirty smudgings or grease marks left behind when someone with dirty hands touches a particular item. These items include PC cases, laptop casing and even xbox, ps3, cameras and mobile phones.  It's good to clean it up if you plan on reselling those particular item, adds value. It gives the AS NEW look that a lot of people do when they sell products. I have a lot of clients ask me how I do it and they seem to feel its an extra mile towards the service that may or may not separate you from the rest.

Other applications is having water damaged hardware. Dump it straight into metho to displace the water molecules and then flush it with distilled water and let it dry and fingers crossed if it hasn't shorted and burnt the links, in most cases if it hasn't had any current active after the water damage it will be resurrected with this step. You can fasten the process of drying by using a condenser. Do not use a hair dryer or heat gun or oven. Has to be a condenser like an aircon.  There are other steps involved if this step doesn't work. Tricks of the trade.

nice write up.

another thing to add to above clean job is to make them look as new and last.

eventualy the light will dull again.

ive done stuff bellow to my front indicators and rear lights.

front lower indicators/parkers

most of them will have little pits from stone chips etc..... ive cleaned it with this stuff  called RIPPA a heavy duty industrial degreser but has multiple uses. 

dipped the lens in this Rippa and left it overnight.than brushed with soft brush getting all the dirt out of the tiny pits and cranies. than clenaed it with metho.

lightly sanded it with 2000 wet rub and again clean it with alcohol. do not use wax and grease remover it will melt the lens.

just keep your hand wet and try no to put pressure on the cleaned area. wet hands and water reduces the risk of leaving oily fingerprints on the surface to be painted.

than used plastic primer on it. (its clear substance it primes the plastic for paint) thin coat required.

after dry time than I mix up bit of 2pk Clear and hit it few times with the spray gun making sure all the pits are not visible.  be carefull of runs let the flash time pass first before recoating.

takes few heavy coats.

once dried looks like brand new lens and will last just as long the pits will disapear or be very difficult to spot.

same treatment can be done to brighten the rear lights.

also u can mix up little bit of colour for faded items . BIG TIP has to be transulscent tint colours not ur solids.

this way u can restore the faded lenses to the original vivid colours or for the brave to blend in the rear orange indicator with the rest of the light. ie visualy indicator looks red similar to tail light but it will still glow orange. get rid of that 3rd colour on the lense. makes it less busy.

the colour change u got to be carefull not to overdoo as it will end up red. few light coats and than compare to the stop lamp. when i did mine second time (it was an experiment) i had a light bulb fitted under via a switch and battery. than every few coats turn the globe on to check if still orange.

ive done a set but have included the mettalic as well. looks good but only problem was i went overboard with the blending ( my red wasnt transulcent enough) and now the indicator is kinda dark orange close to red. so till i get more time ill redo the set currently on the car. not a big fan of orange lenses.

hopefully opens more eyes to people before spending big $$ on new lenses.

Good tips in this thread might have to have a play with my spare lenses now - thanks guys

Good tips there ,,

Just wondering if instead of putting the lens into the oven you could use a heat gun to gradually heat the part? I recently used one to remove the fuel filler tube (yes the tank was empty) through the body. When I started it was as hard as rock, but after five minutes felt like soft silicone.

The thought of putting my rear tail lights into the oven makes me somewhat nervous, given the thermostat on our oven is not the best.

Just wondering if anybody else has tried this method with a heat gun?

yeah but i preffer the oven. uniform heat.makes removal lot quicker and easier. on large parts like tailights heat gun tends to cool off quickly at the opposite end.

it will take me 30min with lot of carefully movement to heat up the lens with heatgun.with oven come back after 15 min and she comes off easy. preheat the oven first.

trust me oven lot better just dont tell the missus 

oh yeah get a better oven with better temp control. 

my heat gun is used only to heatshrink the wires or when repairing plastic. good point source heat. also good for poping cocroaches. 

i've used a big heat gun and it worked ok..... but i felt i was a little close to melting the lenses a few times. i think the oven is a much safer way IMO

yeah thats what i thought and i got a proper tempereature controlled heat gun.

u can set it in 5deg steps from 50C to 400C and holds realy well. u can even dry ur hair at 50C not that i would risk flicking it to the higher setting otherwise end up bald 

but still think oven is better lot easier and even cheaper as everyone should have an oven at home.