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The tinting on the Lexus lights has already started fading and going an orangey colour, so i decided to do something about it. I don't fancy retinting them every few months, so i've had a go at detangoing a set of OEM lights.
A £5 "best offer" in the closing minutes of a non selling pair of lights on ebay was accepted to my joy and got me a pair of lights to play with.
Separating them is a horrendous job, the joining mastic is rock hard and when heated goes a nasty sticky gooey still very strong putty type glue. I settled on the heatgun method, heating the seam as hot as i could without melting the lights and gradually prying the lights apart with a screwdriver.
Once open, i popped out the tango'd reflector from the housing and traced an outline on a ceiling tile "light diffuser" (£3 a sheet from TLC Electrical!). Scored the line with a Stanley Knife and metal rule
Used a circular saw attachment on a dremmel to cut out the outline and then filed off the edges
A bit more filing to get a good fit
Then did the other lens. Don't forget the Bow, power tools are more fun this way and it eases the pain when things go wrong.
I used some clear RV sealant to make a bead around the housing and then used whatever i could lay my hands on to help the lens curve to the shape of the housing, and let it set.
When set, i put a bead round the edge of the lens with the RTV sealant which hid any imperfections in the cutting. I made this job five times more difficult as i managed to put a cut in the tube of sealant with the stanley knife and duck tape only stopped so much of it squirting out of the wrong place!
Then the painful process of putting them back together. I used the heatgun to heat up all the grey mastic and scraped as much out as i could with a screwdriver, smoothing out what i couldn't remove, both on the lens and the housing. I then heated it up again, put a good bead of RTV clear sealant all way round the housing and put the two bits together. I had to continue heating as i pushed them together to melt any left behind mastic. Hacked off at this point, as i managed to small crack in the bottom of one of lights trying to click the base back in, despite managing not to crack anything when i opened them!
Clamped the base in the workmate and G clamps across the top (you can just see the crack in the bottom left of the left light!).
At this point the cat came over the fence with a frog in her mouth, so i did the usual frog rescue and took the frog to our neighbours over the road with a pond. Got chatting, had quite a few more ciders, then some more and then come and it was dark, so bunged everything in garage to finish off in the morning.
Still reckon that cars look cooler without lights though
So in the morning i polished up with Menz polish on a medium pad followed by a finishing polish on a finishing pad.
Job done.
