NB (1) Taillight Orange Removal / Red Painting

[mr2nique]

I am on an orange killing spree lately. I knocked out the headlights, long ago darkened the side markers, and now its time for the taillights.

Previously I tried the red film on ebay and cut it into circles. It worked pretty well but unfortunately they fade in months. It is weird to see the red film become clear and useless, but it happens.

So this time I went to VHT NiteShades red paint. The process was long and fun.

Final Product Shot:
Taillight Comparison.jpg

Step 1:
Sand with 1500 sandpaper (paper not shown, after sanding complete)
IMG_3595.jpg

Step 2:
Adhesion Promoter (clear) spray. Single layer. I am told it helps greatly for plastics.
IMG_3596.jpg

Step 3:
Mask the reverse light (maybe the worst part of the process). There is not enough of a line in this area to make a razor cut easy so I had to mask the unique shape by hand. I did an somewhat ok good.
IMG_3598.jpg

Step 4:
VHT Nite Shades Red (3 coats).
IMG_3600.jpg

Step 5:
After drying, remove the mask for the reverse lights.
IMG_3602.jpg

Step 6:
Clear Coat (3 coats)
IMG_3605.jpg

Step 7:
Smile, admire, and patiently wait for it to dry in 24-48 hours for install.

Step 8:
Look like a modern car and enjoy.

With the cold days I had to heat my garage and do it in there as paint likes to be above 60F and we are having 50F days lately. I think the cold and my lack of quality technique has left some mild orange peel on the texture, so it is possible I may need to do some sanding, polishing in the future.But for now it passes the 5ft test quite nicely.

It looks good!!!! Huge improvement over the original orange.

[— Agent☣Orange —]

What the heck do you have against orange??

[— Phatmiata —]

Looks great I want to do this with the factory clear tail lights on my mazdaspeed3.

Great write up, thanks for sharing this !!

And welcome to the forum!!