Paint Your Headlight Surrounds Black

[eviltwin]

DISCLAIMER: I do not take any responsibility for this project destroying any part of your car or causing you or others injuries. Please be cautious when trying this, I suggest if you have no experience with the tools needed to take extreme care or not attempt this at all. Take Care

Im not going to show you how to remove or replace the headlight on the car , so the start of my guide is post removal , place it on your bench , desk or missus back and start reading....

The first thing to do is to gather the tools needed to remove to lense of the headlight:

Knife or knives ( used to pry and cut through the melted silicone etc )

Heat Gun ( I think that ones fairly obvious )

Now , start from one of the corners on the light housing and heat the casing rather than the lense of the headlight to warm the silicon up and make sure you don't just heat one spot up as you will damage the plastic. Once you get enough heat into the corner carefully use the knife and run it down the seams of the silicon, eventually you will see that the casing is becoming loose in the spot. Once you hane enough heat in it start to pry it open , remember not to heat the lense as much as the casing as the lense will crack with to much heat.

At this point it is a matter of taking your time and being very patient , do not attempt to bend the casing as you will damage both the lense and casing in doing so , continue heating , running the knife along and prying.

Now make sure you undo all of the clips holding the lense in and use some heat and you should have the show on the road...

[eviltwin]

Make sure you remove the indicator housing ( one Phillips head screw ). and you will have this:

Now you will need:

Masking Tape

Paint ( your choice but i suggest a matt or flatt black colour ) i used White Knight high temp engine enamel in flat black ( $14.95 at Bunnings )

Newspaper ( for masking and protecting the surface the light in being painted on )

Steady arm ( Make sure you paint in the correct fashion we don't want any runs )

Now start masking the light up , it's up to you how much of it you want to paint. This is a guide only.

[eviltwin]

Now , being very steady give the housing the first coat of paint ( 3 will be sufficient )

Once painted leave the lights for a few hours ( this depends on the temperature outside and also what the drying time according to the paint can is ).

After they have dried you can carefully take the masking tape off the lights and get them ready for re-assembly.

[eviltwin]

To place the lens back on you will need:

Heat Gun

Rags

Clamps ( Bunnings $4.00 each )

Now carefully heat both surfaces where the silicon is ( take care and remember to not heat one spot for to long otherwise the wicked witch of the west will tell you she's melting.

Once heated bond them back together and give it a firm press around the edges to ensure a good bond. Apply your rags at each corner and then use your clamps ( make sure you don't clamp the light directly you will scratch the pants off it.

Now make sure the bond is good and all of the clips are back into place ( heat them up if your finding it hard and they will go back into place ) .

Leave the clamps on for 15 minutes and the voila - your done!

Well that concludes my little guide , i hope this helps you guys , theres nothing to be scared of just take it easy.

Mick ;)

[tinno]

champ! I was planning on doing this mod this coming Monday. You just saved me time having to look up a diy guide :D. Thanks heaps!

[Kenneth]

champ! I was planning on doing this mod this coming Monday. You just saved me time having to look up a diy guide :D. Thanks heaps!

tinn that is for pre-face, as for facelift headlight there is a whole thread pinned in the workshop submission section if im not mistaken

[eviltwin]

I did notice that there was a pinned guide but i decided to do this because ive done it before on my AE82 and people will always ask , it can't hurt to have a couple of guides.

[.gorgz]

Would you need to do any sanding or need to paint it with primer firstly, would paint flake because its painted on some what of a polished surface??

[eviltwin]

the paint i chose was the most suitable to no prep work , the reason i did not prepare it is because of all of the left over particals or dust that would stay inside the light... it stuck like **** to a blanket. Use the same brand as i have and you will be fine.

[Kenneth]

I did notice that there was a pinned guide but i decided to do this because ive done it before on my AE82 and people will always ask , it can't hurt to have a couple of guides.

no no dont get me wrong, because tinn has a facelift so it would be easier to follow the fact lift guide as it requires next to no taping up and whatsoever :) good guide nonetheless ;)

[and1]

I did notice that there was a pinned guide but i decided to do this because ive done it before on my AE82 and people will always ask , it can't hurt to have a couple of guides.

no no dont get me wrong, because tinn has a facelift so it would be easier to follow the fact lift guide as it requires next to no taping up and whatsoever :) good guide nonetheless ;)

Plus there's screws in the back of the facelift tail lights that must be removed to open up the casing.

Fantastic guide eviltwin!! This should make more prefacelift owners do the mod :)

[.gorgz]

I did notice that there was a pinned guide but i decided to do this because ive done it before on my AE82 and people will always ask , it can't hurt to have a couple of guides.

no no dont get me wrong, because tinn has a facelift so it would be easier to follow the fact lift guide as it requires next to no taping up and whatsoever :) good guide nonetheless ;)

Plus there's screws in the back of the facelift tail lights that must be removed to open up the casing.

Fantastic guide eviltwin!! This should make more prefacelift owners do the mod :)

haha I'm gonna give it a shot after during christmas break.. works being a b#tch.. <_<

but yea, thank you very much for reposting this eviltwin.. its an awesome guide with none of that oven BS so we're less likely to screw it up..

[eviltwin]

the oven is a bad idea.

1 - you will make mummy or the missus/hubby farken cranky cause the house will smell like silicon plastic and hooker juice.

2 - you can easily over do it and start melting things

3- heat guns aren't expensive mine was 15 bucks and it's never played up.

4 - i said so

5 - because i said so in number 4

[Evo7]

the oven is a bad idea.

1 - you will make mummy or the missus/hubby farken cranky cause the house will smell like silicon plastic and hooker juice.

2 - you can easily over do it and start melting things

3- heat guns aren't expensive mine was 15 bucks and it's never played up.

4 - i said so

5 - because i said so in number 4

Uncle Evil,

can we perhaps see the end result on your car??

If it looks as fantastic, this maybe the next best thing to C-One Headlights :D

Well done mate B)

Evo

[eviltwin]

Ok , fair call , here we go!

[Brad-dreama]

now if only the pics on the face lift one worked =p

good job tho evil

[-JC-]

Awesome guide Eviltwin, thank you. I did this over the weekend on my facelift, which was actually a little easier as the chrome surround comes right out and requires much less masking.

I got a little adventurous, wanted HID's with a proper beam cut off as well . . .

[DJKOR]

^ Very nice work there JC. Good to see a projector retrofit to help get rid of that glare. Stylish and courteous to other road users.

[eviltwin]

Thats a damn nice job!

[shin0bi]

hey -jc- did you do any prep work to the surrounds? sand it down abit? or primer?

[.gorgz]

I just failed at this, i tried a similar thing on one of the headlights on my prelude and shattered the glass =[

luckily, the cars up for wrecking and I was only trying to get some practice in before I try it on the rolla.....

I don't think I should be trying it now LOL!

[Lunjiaow]

I just saw this DIY 30mins ago. Now i have one of my headlights apart.

This DIY actually got me off my ***** to try it, even in my sleeping clothes.

[xcellenc3]

hey..

am planning to do this mod my my car next weekend..

how long did u take? all up as in from taking the headlight off the car, drying time and resembling it back together..

also would it be better, when putting the headlight back together, to add new silicone sealent/adhesiv

[clifton]

does anyone have a picture of a finished preface lift light, just want to confirm what I can spray before I do this!

[White Lightning]

none of the effing pics work... *sad face mcgee*

can we have some new pic links coz I wanna try this on another model of car and wanna see how adaptable it is / could be... and save myself about $400...