DIY: Red Out Tails (EVO VII STYLE)
 

So I just got my Evo VIII, and I love it! It's a very nice car, but there are a few things I would like to change about it to make it my own. The first thing is these tail lights! I don't like the altezza look at all, so I decided to get rid of it! This is how I went about doing it.

First I talked to my girlfriends dad as he is a professional bodyman. I basically told him what I was after and he gave me 3 options.

1. Bring them to someone that tints cars, and ask them if they can do it with tint film. I told I could get red tint film off ebay and he laughed and said, "Don't do that, you'll screw it up."

2. Bring them to a body shop and have them do it.

3. Get some tranparent candy apple red paint, and clear, and go to town on it. I chose this option. With that in mind, lets start!




This is important as I was doing this outside. The positon that the car is parked is crutial. You want to be with the wind. So if in painting and I get a gust of wind, the overspray doesnt go onto my car. This would suck!

1.) Tape off the rear 1/2 of the car, along with the tail lights. I chose to keep the tails on the car because it seemed like it would be easier. This is the step you dont want to skip on at all! I took atleast 30 minutes taping everything off and making sure it looked perfect. TAKE YOUR TIME HERE!!
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2.) After we have everything taped of really well, we can move on. Next we want to clean the surface as best we can. You can use a few things for this. I recommend preps-all, rubbings alcohol, some kind of prep wipe, or glass cleaner. The only thing I had was glass cleaner. If you are like me and only use glass cleaner its very important that you scrub at the light. Make sure everything is dry and clean
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My car had been cleaned the day before...
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3.) Next is the nerve-racking part. Painting your precious car!! Its really not that bad, but if you're not good at spray painting, I would not suggest trying unless you have extra tails laying around. These are the paints you need:
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Testors Transparent Candy Apple Red, part # 1605
Testors Clear Coat, part # 1261
These should be pretty easy to get. If you cant find them locally, call up Testors and order some.

Alright so lets paint. First, shake the paint can hard for a good 5 minutes. These paints are enamel based and take quite a bit of shaking to mix well. Once the paint is shaken up well spray thin even coats on the light. Keep your hand about 10-12 inches from the light. These paints are very easy to make run, so be careful! I applied 3 coats of the candy apple red.
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4.) Let the red tack up for about an hour. After thats done, we cna start to clear. I Taped off the bottom corner of the lens to replicate the Evo VII tails, so I had to cut that masking tape off before I could clear them. This is important because if I just paint and clear without un-masking that part, you will clearly see that the light have been painted. We want them to look nice and stock so this step is necessary.
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After about 4 coats of clear on each light they look like this!
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Let these bake in the sun as long as possible. I'm giving mine all day! DO NOT wash your car for 3 full days, and dont wax the lights for 3 MONTHS! This paint takes time to harden. After my 3 months have passed, I'm going to wetsand and compound them. They should look excellent then! Heres the finished product.

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They look a bit cloudy because they're not completely dry.

Tomorrow I'm doing to do a DIY on how to amber out your HVAC controls, and your stock MR gauges as well as painting your stock VIII Headlights to look exactly like the JDM Spec lights!

Looks good but you should have taped off the lines to really replicate the VII tails. Heres mines,Attachment 300756 Its easier to do it if you take the tails apart.

Yours look perfect!! but to be honest, I prefer it this way. Your are flawless though. What paint did you use?

LOL at the newspaper! Why not just remove the taillights from the car?

:confused: lol

You can if you want, but I didn't. I wasnt going to remove the lens to paint the light, so it was just as easy this way.

HAHA i thought the same thing.

Thread + pics when you do. {thumbup}

nice write up! im going to paint my own tails tomorrow after i pick up some candy apple red paint...

can anyone tell me if anything would happen if i were to use Krylon Gloss Clear Coat? or do i have to use a certain clear coat?

lol newpaper, could have been alot faster removing the light

i just painted a set of USDM VIII tails red with the clear turn signal...after i sprayed the clearcoat it looks a lot darker and a little cloudy...is that normal?

for the time it takes you to put on all that news paper the lights come off in a split second

can we have a more close up pics of the lights please? :)

excellent work
how does it look when illuminated? night shots?
what would be a good colour for amber turn signal to replicate JDM EVO 8 tails?

Nice.