O.K.,I was looking for a nice driver side taillight,mine got a nice big crack in it.Anyway,I was making a deal for one here on the forum and then found one today at a local salvage yard in the trunk of a TC.It appeared to be heavily fogged from the inside (Horrible white looking haze),and a LOT of surface scratches and the reflector inside was heavily dulled and faded.I bought two bottles of diffeent plastic restorer and went to work.,I pulled the reflector out,washed everything after it soaked to loosen up 21 years of ,then started polishing.It's awesome in person.VERY clear and shiny,and well worth the effort.I'm going to polish a little more "just because".Jack,owner of the yard gave the lense up for free since it was "way to gone" in his opinion.The haze turned out to be a lot of dirt.When I recieve my sequential light kit from Carmen,the pretty lenses and kit will go on the car.The top light in the pic is the cracked lense,the bottom is the one I'm working on.It looked worse than the top before I started.Here's the py..................
(http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc205/Vinnietbird/000_0702.jpg)
looks good. keep up the work. if that is all by hand that is killer. if you don't have one you need to go and get one of those mini mothers type polishing ball setup. works wonders. the big mother ball is to big for lots of things.
I'd love to get one,but never think about it until I'm in a place,or a time frame that doesn't allow it.It's all be hand right now.Oh well,I can literally say,"hand polished",plus,I was sitting on the couch watching TV while I was working.Nice.Polish,a couple of old t-shirts,and bad TV.Awesome.
I have a $15 buffer I got from Meijer. Its a cheapy shop force brand but its lasted for a good long time. A couple of months ago I located a dirty scratched set of tail lights for gumby. I took them apart and cleaned them up and then buffed the lenses with rubbing compound. That took out all of the scratches and left the surface looking new.
The reflector is crazy with all of those fins on it's face,but,I have it back to it's glossy factory look.Those sequential lights are gonna RAWK !!!!
heck yeah, the tails look great!
how do my headlights look? :flip:
Looks good Vinnie
I used to keep mine nice and clear with polishing compound , machine glaze then wax. always did a good job. I figured while I did my car every spring it was nothing to hit the lights too.
Thanks for the compliments.Since all I have to do today is mail a couple of packages,I'll start the passenger side next.It's something I can do while I'm relaxing on my day off.As I stated,I want them ready for the sequentials.When I get the light kit and lights installed,and,get me exhaust tips on (probably another freakin' week for those),I'll try to take a little video for you guys.
Hey, Vinnie a little hard work always has it's rewards. great job so far :cool:
i wanna make another topic, but i dont want to postw :| it has to do with this exact subject.
first though, that looks REALLY FREAKIN GOOD. i need to do that myself. thats the product that really works; elbow grease! great great job. what plastic restorer did you get? i remember going to a bunch or part stores and they only thing they had was some used left over stuff that didnt work for snot.
but here's my question, i got a big problem with dust from dirt roads inside my taillights. in between the lense and the reflectors. i noticed it had gotten really bad yesterday when it rained. how can i keep it from doing that in the future and how do i open them up to clean them b/c arent they 1 piece?
Vinnie, great job man. Yeah, the finned inner reflector is a bear...that takes up most of your time.
Last summer I restored a pair of 1985-86 Cougar taillights for the convertible; those taillights have the same kind of finned inner reflector as the 1987-88 Thunderbird taillights. It took awhile but I got them looking to almost NOS condition. You just have to take your time.
http://www.coolcats.net/ximages/86tl_af_01.jpg
http://www.coolcats.net/ximages/86tl_af_02.jpg
http://www.coolcats.net/ximages/86tl_af_03.jpg
The REAL trick is restoring 1983-84 Cougar taillights though. Talk about an exercise in patience. I've got it perfected except for the chrome accents; those are going to be very tough to correct. Here is a link to my test section on the taillight:
http://www.coolcats.net/ximages/84tl_v2_04.jpg
This is a half/half s '84 lens that I had laying around...it had some extremely deep scratches that I worked out:
http://www.coolcats.net/ximages/84tl_02.jpg
http://www.coolcats.net/ximages/84tl_04.jpg
It's fun work for me, I enjoy doing stuff like this. And really, it doesn't cost a whole ton of money to restore these taillights. Just takes time, that's all.
I did that with my taillights last winter. They were leaking and just looked like in general.
I pulled em apart, cleaned em up, man they look 10 times better.
BTW, AC- If your lights are already leaking, the lenses are probably loose. It's actually fairly easy to pry the lenses off once an edge comes loose. Then you just seal them back up with clear silicone.
Thanks Eric.Time and patience,that's the trick.
As far as taking the taillight apart,that's the easy part.I removed the assembly from the car,and gently pulled the lense from the light housing.It was "glued" together with some sort of trim or weatherstrip adhesive it appears.The reflector on the inside was either glued in,or was "heat melted" together.Just be very careful and the reflector will snap out.Don't apply a lot of pressure,you don't want to crack the lense.......guess how I know that?LOL.The front of the reflector,the part you see from the outside of the lense,is the part to polish.The black on the inside of the lense is painted in.It can be touched up easily,just mask EVERYTHING you don't want to apply black paint to,front and back as insurance.
I bought the polishes at Autozone.They both work extremely well.
BlueMagic Headlight Lense restorer and Meguiar's PlastX.It has been my experience so far using these products (over the few hours I used them last night),that the Bluemagic is the one to start with,then follow it up with the PlastX.The PlastX seems to have a smoother finishing compound in it.
Before you start any polishing ata ll,make sure all of the light pieces are as clean as you can get them.It's pointless to try and polish over dirt and dust.You'll just cause more scratches.I still have to figure out the best stuff to re-seal everything together.I'm going back to Autozone to check their adhesives.I have some weatherstrip adhesive,but I want to look at other products first so I only have to do this once.
I used one of those pressurized containers of clear silicone from Advance...whatever you would call those? But they have the little "trigger" handle on them and it really saves your hands when you're doing something big like these taillights.
i was thinking about the same pressurized glue gun type, but windshield adhesive b/c that stuff never ever comes off and seals well. i actually feel that my lenses are leaking around the weather stripping where the bulbs go through b/c i dont get water inside the lenses just lots and LOOOOOOTS of dust. if you ever seen ga red clay dust, thats what it is, looks horrible!
That's what these lights looked light.Tons of red dust.Here in Oklahoma,we have a lot of red clay as well.I hate it,but not enought to move away.LOL.I may check into the glue gun stuff.I need to make sure it's weather proof and pretty strong.I don't want to lose my lenses at 90mph down the interstate..............if I were to ever drive that fast...................which I would never do because that would be illegal and wrong.
Make sure you get all the compound out of the crevices below and above the fins...its a huge pain and looks awful in the sunlight. When you put them back together, seal the inner and outer lenses together so dust never gets between them again.
I too had a problem with gravel road dust getting in the tails....took my lenses apart 3-5 times, only to later find I had a small rusty hole in the trunk, allowing dust to coat everything back there, including the tails.
It was coming in the tails around the bulb sockets.
Looking for a nice good set when money allows, btw..:hick:
I'm wondering ehat would make a goodgasket between the bulb sockets and the lights.Perhaps I could find a sheet of thin rubber gasket material and cut some out as a "just in case".
the best thing i've found to make those bulb socket gaskets out of are computer mouse pads. they are cheap and seem to be the same type of foam.
o0o i like the mousepad idea. i definatly need to open them up and clean them, but the mouse pads are cheap! did you use 1 or 2 "ply" (doubled up) pads for each hole?
Mousepads.Good idea.I'll grab a couple of cheap ones and start cutting.I needed a reason to get the good ol' Exacto knife out anyway.
BTW- when I sealed up my lights with the silicone, I put rags around them and then some small camlock straps like you'd use for hauling, and cinched them down to make sure it all stayed together while the silicone cured.
ford actually used butyl tape for putting the lens and
housing together.if you bought the lense through parts
they would include enough to do it. 3M has 1/4- 5/16
and 3/8 tape kits .years ago thats what held in a front
or back window in cars. now its all urethane.
Thanks Irv.I just got some adhesive at Autozone.I'm getting ready to give it a try.
I don't think dust between the bulbs and inner lens would look nearly as bad as dust between the inner and outer lenses so I'd first focus on sealing those two together. I used tons of rtv, some sound dampening mat I had left over pushed into the silicone, then more silicone on top. I didn't worry about sealing the bulbs against the inner lens as it can't be seen and if anything gets on that side, it washes right off (the rough side of the lens with the red/white inserts melted into place). If I ever get a set of NOS tail lights, I'll just fiberglass the inner and outer lenses together - paint it for moisture and problem solved.
i used only one layer of the mouse pad. works great if you want to use 2 layers i would make sure to glue them together
I'll grab a black mousepad after I drop my little man off at school.Then,I'll finish my taillights and the world will be a better place because of that.
Mmmm...that might not be a good idea. No matter what you do, air and dirt and dust will always find a way to get inside taillight assemblies, and if you ever need to disassemble them, the fiberglass would really hinder that. Now a full coat of silicone, that's a very good idea. The principle is that if you ever NEED to crack open the taillight assembly to clean, replace, polish, etc. then you have to have some kind of access to do that. Silicone is easily removed and replaced, plus provides a watertight seal at the very least. Fiberglass = permanent. :)
True Dat.
vinnie, just wondering what kind of glue/silicone/epoxy did you get? i usually use the black m3 window shield glue, but now that i think about it after reading erics post, i think it'd be pretty hard to get it out. i mean it wouldnt be hard to get the assembly apart, just cleanup would be a nightmare.
I'm going to go ahead and use 3M sealant adhesive.I've used it before with good results.I just make sure that after I put the light assemblies together,I let them sit in the back room and cure for about 24 to 36 hours.I may not need to wait that long,but,I feel more comfortable that way.I ran out of time today to do that,so,I'll probably assemble the lights Sunday afternoon after work and install the Monday evening.
Fiberglass is only permanent if you don't have a dremel. I've "readjusted" one of my headlights two or three times now to fix the angle and reglassing it back together.
It really isn't much to seal around the tail light to make the inner and outer lenses air proof. If anything, fiberglass, jb weld, whatever the 4 corners and lay down 3 tubes of silicone around the perimeter to make sure it holds. I try to do things once and never have to touch them again.
So far so good on my pair of used lights I cleaned up. Clean the dust off the outside and it looks like new again inside and out. I'm afraid of the brittle plastic though, as the used ones are pretty aged (they replaced ones that had cracks on both sides where they wrapped around the quarter panel).
Well,as I said,tomorrow right after work,I'm pulling the lights from the Sport and taking them apart.I'll clean up the housings really nice,then install these "restored" lenses.They do look great.Now all I need is my sequential light kit that's in route to me and I'll be all set.I'm getting a little excited about that.
Speaking of that kit, does it light all 6 bulbs when braking or the factory 4?
Easy way to keep the lenses from falling out is to put a couple of screws in the lense frame and lense where they meet. I guarente that the lenses won't fall out :D When the trunk is closed you can't see the top of the lense any way so why not make sure it stays together :D
All 6 bulbs light up. They come on in sequence from the inner to outer bulbs on both sides when you step on the brakes :D
Here ya go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkLPbIbuKE0
I thought it only did it with the turn signal
I think it does only do it with the signal.
What did you use to redo the chrome accent? I would love to redo my 84 lights, I would really like to buy a second set and polish/paint those and install those with the sequential kit and keep my Factory lights stored.
Well...after much digging I discovered that the process by which the chrome was applied to sections of the 1983-84 taillights is called vacuum metalizing. It's the only kind of real chroming that's done on plastic with any degree of success. So far I have not found a source that can do these taillights cheaply.
What I tried was the Alsa spray paint. They claim it's like putting real chrome on...in reality it's just a heavy metal-flake silver spray paint. Their tech support was a little cryptic with how the final result is supposed to look. Their examples of finished products, and my photos, were two very different things. I'm a little unhappy with the end result, especially after all the hours of meticulous taping. It's not up to show-quality standards, although for a lot of people it may be a good solution.
Anyhow...you do have other options. The 1984 XR7 had black paint on the taillights where the chrome would normally be. That is a very evil look. Also, you could simply remove all the chrome with lacquer thinner and just leave it red...it looks very nice. Of course, the cat head should probably be left chrome if that's in good shape, or maybe painted black. Either way it's a custom look, very subtle but personalized nonetheless.
You're going to have a very difficult time getting sequentials to work in a taillight that has only two spots for bulbs...
The light looked like trash,but the chrome birds on each lense was in great shape,just really dirty.I wentover mine with windex and they cleaned right up.The "bath" probably loosened and removed a lot.I was afraid to use anything too harsh.A little Crest tooth paste may work as well.The past has very very mild abrasives.I've used toothpaste to polish the plastic windows on model cars with great results.I washed the entire lenses and reflectors with warm water and Dawn dish sopa and let them soak a little in the bathtub.Then,a good rinsing followed by a LOT of polishing with some very soft polishing clothes I got at Autozone for 3 bucks.I used an old T-shirt to apply the polish really good,then the soft clothes to remove it.Seems to work well.They look like new.Update pics soon.
I painted over my chrome birds, and reflectors, with Niteshades. I like it, they match the rest of the taillight better, and I've never been a big fan of the birds on the taillights anyway (and now they're black)