Today I blacked out the headlights. Some sage advice from hindsightland

1.) Bake the lights with the clear part (lens) down, this makes the heating of the sealant gluey stuff more even. The first light I did with the light sitting as it would in the car, and it baked the top, but the bottom was sitting on the wet towel, so it wouldn't come apart, I had to re-bake.

2.) Do not drop the inside part of the light your painting, it will break in half

3.) if it breaks in half, it will sit inside the housing still and you won't really be able to tell. Just gorilla glue it or something...

4.) Make sure..>SURE that when you re-assemble and bake you have all the parts in. I re-assembeled, installed and tested my passenger headlight before realising I left out the turn signal dispersing lens thing. Damn!

Ok, so bake, take apart, paint...


wait for paint to dry (see picture one)...still waiting...observe nature in the meantime...

When done, reassemble, re-bake and re-squish together. Here is a finished product (sans turn signal lens...DAMN was I pissed) (picture 2)

Install and test... (picture 3)

Remove and replace missing PARTS!

Replace and pose for close up (last picture)


I also realised that this car has likely been in an accident before I bought it, probably a minor fender bender because I damn near tore the corner off looking for signs of damage. My Drivers side headlight says 2003 on the back, among many other numbers. My car is an 03 (obviously). The LEFT side headlight, on the other hand, says 2002 on the back and on the front lens says DEPOT on it. So it's obviously a replacement. To their credit, it was much easier to disassemble...

 

Ok so that last picture won't upload, so here goes

 

looks real good.

 

this is awesome, i'm gonna do it too now
so its a few easy steps then, bake - take apart - paint - put back together
what temp and how long did you have the lights in the oven, what kind of paint did you use, and what parts didn't you paint? thanks@!

 

I followed https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/sh...d.php?t=164714 that How to. It's more or less the same for the 02-03 models, only you don't have to remove the bumper. I don't know, i've seen it alluded to that it's really hard to get them out but I didn't have any trouble whatsoever.

275F for 5 minutes to take them apart, 275F for 2 min 30 sec if you need to re-bake. I used a semi-gloss black paint, apparently anything works. No, you don't need high-temp paint.


When you open the unit, you'll pretty much see what you will be painting. The part you paint is the part that comes off in the front of the light and screws in, the part you don't paint is the part that is attached to the back of the headlight, this is what serves to reflect the light out. Don't paint that, whatever you do...

Also, don't forget to pop out the clear turn signal lens part, it's tricky to get out, but a flat head screwdriver will make it tolerable.

Just another note, don't worry about;

1.) The headlights making a bad smell when baking possibly ruining your oven. No smell, no mess.

2.) As long as you're careful not to let parts dangle, and you wet it enough, the towel you use to bake it on will be re-useable too, it's fine.

3.) The pan you bake it on will also be spared if you do things right.

4.) just make sure no parts of the housing touch the interior of the oven, you don't want to melt anything

5.) Use oven mitts, but the housing cools down really quick to the point you can easily handle it without them.

P.S. That write-up says it takes about an hour to get the housings apart, so find somewhere comfy. It took me max 30 min on the first with a re-bake and the second one was a breeze, so I budgeted a day and was done in 2 hours...

 

you're really helpful! are you saying it takes a long time pulling the two pieces apart after you bake?

 

nice imma start my build soon.

 

Not a lot of time, but a lot of effort. You have to be careful not to bend the housing too too much so that you can bend it back when you reseal it. It's really really tough sticky stuff the sealant. You need a knife, because once you get it apart, you'll just see it in strings like bad cheese, you have to cut it, I tried pulling apart without the knife, but I think you just risk warping something since it's so hot. Just get a cheap box-cutter knife and a throw away blade, because that will be done after you're finished.

 

good job. now take a look at your car stock, and compare it to now. that's what i did. keep it up.

 

Old



New



Yeah...it's easy to forget how far one has come...

 

Some more interior stuffs. I painted the shifter housing and drink holder/compartment storage...thing.

Might I suggest, flat black, in my opinion, looks way better, but I *accidentally* bought semi-gloss and sprayed before I realized. Boo! Oh well, these aren't parts that will reflect sunlight into my eyes.

I have the flocked dash kit on the way and shipped, should hopefully be in next week.

I also looked at painting the whole dash black, but the middle piece, is like...the dash. It looks like i'd have to remove the HVAC controls, stereo etc etc...worth it? Dunno...

Anyway here's the progress below

and bonus, look what I found when I did it! $0.65! Maybe I eliminated a couple rattles from the shifter housing...

 

looks alright mate. nice work. I just painted my A-pillars cos i got a guage pod. I used gloss black too.
it looks pretty decent. If you use some decent cleaner to get your dash shiney, it will look good

one things you HAVE to do though, is remove the hand brake and paint it. or put one of those cheapy wraps on it. Anything to make it black to match everything else. Cos right now, it just looks like a big erect ***** sticking out of the floor

 

If I paint it, do you think the paint will stand up to use?

 

Ok, well for the parking brake, I was thinking either RA parking brake or paint it, but that material, when painted, takes like 4 days to set properly (IE armrest cover) so i'll have to do that when i'm going away somewhere.


As for the dash, here's an update...all that's left are the doors (not looking forward to that) and the piece at the floor...not sure if i'll paint that, it's pretty heavy traffic wise...

 

i did the same thing as you, except i got the top part of the dash and the front and back doors completely, the hand brake does start to come off after a few weeks. my only advice for ppl is to let it dry overnight, you will thank yourself in the morning

p.s. the steering wheels starts to look more and more out of place