How to: Dissecting your tail lights
 

Since its another miserable and wet day here in Oregon, what better to do then start tearing apart my spare tail lights. I have search and read many a thread suggesting using various methods for dissecting our tail lamps. Everything from a heat gun, hot water bath, to using the oven. I tried the heat gun and it just does not provide a even enough heat to easily remove the shell. The hot water bath is great, if you have a hot water heater that can put out near boiling water. Plus who would want to stick their hands in a near boiling tub. Here is my oven based attempt.

What you need:
Phillips Screw Driver.
Baking Sheet covered with Aluminum Foil
Gloves (Thick)

To start, cover the baking sheet with the aluminum foil. Open your oven and remove all racks except for the very bottom one. Pre Heat the oven to 250F. Important! Let it completely warm up before inserting parts.

To prep the tail lights, remove the 6 screws on the back side. Remove everything you can. Wiring harness, rubber breather hose, anything loose. (Mine still had the body mounting tabs on them due to someone not knowing how to remove them).
Set the light on the tray and place it in the oven for 10 minutes.

Remove from the oven and quickly put on your gloves. Place the hot tray somewhere safe (I used drying platforms), and find a good hand hold on the light and shell. I used a thumb in the turn signal bulb spot and grabbed the edge of the lights shell. Using light force, pry until the glue starts to separate. IF the light does not budge, check all the screw locations and if the part seems cool, place it back in the oven for a few more minutes, checking on it. (Basically, make sure your oven works). You will get a slight smell of warm plastic, please leave your oven door open when you are finished, this will help get rid of the smell.

Congrats! You now have separated the shell from the body. You can now mod the lights to 99 SPEC. (Its easy, a little flat black vinyl dye, a scotch brite pad, and some pre cut vinyl circles and your set!)

To reassemble the lights, simple preheat both parts in the oven again for 5-10 minutes, place them back together, and insert the screws. Let cool before installing them. Once installed, pick up some 3m plastic polish and go at it! They will look like new in just a few minutes!

(Yes these are real 99 tails, they both were damaged. I am trying to find new lens for them :()

More...

Now I must reiterate this. Remove the racks from your oven and let it reach full temp before inserting the lights!
If you do NOT do this, it will MELT your lens, making it worthless if you want to reuse it!

Mine was too close on the second light and melted the shell. (It was damaged already and being replaced, but STILL!)

Nice, I never even thought of using the oven, Hell I used the heat gun and that took forever.

Reassembly Tip:
When ready to reassembly the lights, place the bodies into the oven for 5 minutes. This softens the adhesive. Once done, place just the lens in for 2 minutes.
Place both together, starting with the turn signal side. They "fold" onto eachother, locking. Work your way around applying pressure and seating the lens. Insert the screws and tighten them hand tight. Work your way around again, squishing the seam as much as possible. Re-tighten the screws.
For the best seal, place entire assembly back into the oven for 5 minutes. Compress the seal again and re tighten the screws. Do NOT force them in, they will strip out the soft plastic. Just hand tight. When cool, you will never be able to tell they were opened :).

Next up. Polishing!

nice write up man

Yes! I warped my first set of lenses in the oven. The directions I was following were at 350 degrees. It was WAY too hot, and I wasn't watching close enough. The second set I just used a heat gun. It took longer, but they turned out really nice.
Then one of them fell off while mocking them up on my car. The corner of by the center garnish busted off! :wallbash:

I want to do this mod, where do you get pre-cut circles? michaels? or a crafts store?

+1

i saved it for future reference

I found a local print shop to make them for me. It cost about $10 for them to cut (15) 3" circles out of a vinyl sticker. enough for me and my buddy to do both of ours + a couple extra just because they fit on the same sheet.

It would scare me to put it in the oven at first, but after blasting mine with a heat gun for 15 minutes when I had to replace a lens, seems a hell of alot easier to stick them in the oven!!!

I went to Michaels and got a protractor and a exacto knife, and contact paper it worked out perfect.

I did it successfully, thanks for the words of wisdom! I made a whole new thread cause I was excited. lol. Probably should of just put it in here, but I mentioned some other stuff in the thread so it is worthy of its own.

or, you could just do it the easy and safe way and use a heat gun. correct tool for the job...

kinda wierd... i posted my write up on the tail lights 3 weeks ago or so, and now im seeing these pop up everywhere... im glad to see everyones lights are turning out good... and great job with the oven, i never thought of that... i just used the heat gun, works good enough for me

Did this a few weeks ago after reading this howto.
110 degrees celcius for 8 minutes worked like a charm.
I didn't stick on vinyl circle and painted the lenses, I hade some squares cut from black vinyl and had the circles cut out, works great, no light leaking through and no paint mess.
The whole operation take me just under 2 hours for both tails.

You provided a great service to the FD community with your post. One can save hundreds of dollars by using your directions on howto. I recently checked to buy a pair of 99 spec tail lights from Hong Kong for $450 plus $78 shipping, but after reading your post I will make the conversion myself. Thank you!!:icon_tup:

Thanks for the instructions, great job!
This will save me $450AU on a secondhand set - now I'll buy the rear diffuser with that money.

Funny, I posted how to do this with a heat gun on an old (text/email based listserv) forum about 10 years ago. Glad to see that it is common place now. When I did it everyone was griping about how I was going to ruin them.

The heat gun may take longer, but wouldn't ever warp your lenses. And it has been awhile, but it didn't take me "that" long. You have to use a heat gun, not a hair dryer.

Someone posted my instructions here:
http://alecto.bittwiddlers.com/vehic...7-lights.shtml

Why not use a hair dryer?:scratch:

I don't know if a hair dryer gets hot enough to soften the adhesive to the point that you can safely pull them apart...worth a try though.

Yeah, anyone who spends 500+ on "the real deal" either has money to throw away, or is stupid. It's too easy to do it yourself.

Another option apposed to painting or using contact paper is getting a sheet of vinyl from a local sign shop, or order it from somewhere like signwarehouse.com. That way you have a professional quality film applied over the lens, and it will last for a damn long time and won't cost but maybe 10-20 bucks.

Good point!!

Don't call someone stupid just because they want authenticity. That would be a statement made in very poor taste.

I know your rebuttal will be " But why spend the money when you can get the same results for less"

The answer is simple... they are still not 99 tails. Just painted 93-95.

Sorry fakes look the goods, but the real ones are the best!

i cant tell the difference

I installed genuine JDM '99 spec tails...paid more for them but it was worth it!!