Custom Clear Tail Light (J2/RD), Complete disassembling Options

[jalmir]

I recently bought tail lights from a junkyard I went, I wanted to mod my tail lights but still have the choice to return to stock!

I have a J2 but I'm sure it's the same thing on the XD!!!

So I checked and founded out that the tail cover is only hold by clips and hot glue ... so basically putting the tail light in the oven would do the trick, but as it's all plastic it may cause problems, so I decided to use the heat gun I have but never used ... yet!

The removal is quite time consuming, I could have smash the tail as they were spare parts, but I wanted to keep the cover (just in case) and it'll show how to do it for those that want's to keep their cover and reconvert to sock!


The Tail Light ;




The clips ;





With the heat gun, heat the border of the housing (shown on the picture), this is where the glue is, DO NOT HEAT THE COVER, it's not as resistant as the black housing, it will turn opaque and will then look ugly (did that, so be carefull);


Burned cover ;




Zone of the housing to heat ;





When one half or the total of the housing is heated up, you can pry the cover from it using a flat screw driver or something similar, try to be gentle with the cover if you want to keep it in one piece, don't stress yourself about the housing, it's plastic and by heating it up later you will be able to give it old form back. If you only heated the half of the housing, you can heat the other half when prying the cover appart, it will help if you have hard time taking the cover off.



torn housing border;




Re-heated and formed back housing (don't use your bare hand, use a metalic tool, flat screw driver, simple metal plate or else);




Tail Light free of it's cover ;




Tail Light unassamble with heat gun ;





You can use the heat gun to clean the housing from the glue, it'll be long but worth it, you can use solvant to clean it too, but there is so much glue that getting out most of it will help anyway for any in depth cleaning.

When you feel like everything is cleaned as you want it to be, you're then ready to install your clear cover. For mine I'll use lightly tint acrylic that I'll cut and mold to the form of the OEM cover and use black outdoor silicone to seal everything.

Total time from start to finish (simple housing cleaning included) 45 minutes to 1 hour ...

Hope it'll help!

This post has been edited by jalmir: Aug 30 2006, 07:56 AM

[Cite 3]

wow thats cool..

good job !


cant wait to see what it looks like..

maybe if you can find a spare XD set.. you can sell a few !

[jalmir]

Don't know, someone just told me on EXD that the XD tail can't be disassemble using heat ... it just convincing me to get one XD tail from the junkyard and find out!

[Cite 3]

if it isn't heat... what is it? it can be cut then.. LOL

black silicone solves all problems.. lol


how much was your heat gun? i need one.. lol

[oiml8]

9.99 harbor freight

[Cite 3]

cool..

maybe then i can hurry up and finish tim's guage pod pillar... LOLOL

jalmir.. did you see any XD's in the junkyard?

[jalmir]

The heat gun was 9.99 in special at Canadian Tire (it's a 30$ gun) so I doupt you can find the same!

I don't remember, I checked for J2 and RD when I went there as I was looking for disk hub to swap from my rear drums ... but I'll need to go there soon so I'll check for XD

This post has been edited by jalmir: Aug 30 2006, 09:04 AM

[Cite 3]

hatch !

lol

thanks.

[jalmir]

Just checked on their web site, no XD, I was sure there was no hatch, didn't remember any, but was not sure if they had Sedan XD ... they have lots and lots of accent though!!!

This post has been edited by jalmir: Aug 30 2006, 09:25 AM

[Cite 3]

thats cool.

no prob.. hehe.

so... are you going to tint the acrylic?

[jalmir]

the acrylic is already tinted, a light dark, you can see through it easily, I'll have to fin a high gloss red paint, I can't drive without a red tinted brake light here!

[Cite 3]

my idea a long time ago was to get a round lens from pepboys and modify that to fit a custom cut peice of plastic tubing to create that '3d' effect ...

but alas... time with wifey has overcome all intended projects.. lol