Smoking or Redding BRZ/FR-S Tail Lights

[inferno56kb]

Originally Posted by Bamsterman

Heres my little project...black housing with red tint

Care to make a short vid of how the turn signal looks now? ^^ i need to know it so i can do this project as well. (it has to be orange in my country as per the law or else i would have to leave the turn signal out when painting). Thanks in advance :>

[Bamsterman]

Originally Posted by inferno56kb

Care to make a short vid of how the turn signal looks now? ^^ i need to know it so i can do this project as well. (it has to be orange in my country as per the law or else i would have to leave the turn signal out when painting). Thanks in advance :>

I'll work on getting a video. I have the standard halogen orange bulb in there now, and it only has an orange shade to it...not very noticeable. An orange LED might be better though...

[inferno56kb]

Thanks man, that's greatly appreciated at least it gives me an idea how it looks. Switching to orange LEDs would be no problem

[Bluebatmobile]

Originally Posted by Bamsterman

Heres my little project...black housing with red tint

This looks good .

B@t™

[TheKraken]

Great tutorial! Helped me out a lot. I just went for the straight smoked out look no red.


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[Carlysh]

Originally Posted by DarrenDriven

Here are a couple more shots of the red before I smoked it.

Hello i really want to try this project but prefer red only, i saw your picture of the bottles but got confused with one is red and do you have the name for the bottle for the clear coat, also i many coat of clear did you apply i want to the red to really pop out thanks

[B-R-Z]

Spraymax 2k, best clear coat you can get from a DIY perspective.

[inferno56kb]

Hey since winter is coming and the car will be stored i thought i could do this project. Now my question. I found exactly one seller for the Duplicolor Metalcast Red and the price is pretty high (31€ for one can + 25€ delivery) so my question is how many cans would i need to do both lights in red? let's say 3 layers on each light. Also there is no retailer for VHT niteshade red either so this one seller is literally the only option i found i really want to do this mod since i like the OEM lights better than the aftermarket one's i've seen (also almost all aftermarket lights having a thread where they malfunction, break or set themselves on fire XD) but the price is pretty steep and i haven't done any paintjobs so far (though i might be able to get help from someone who does it for a living)

[KnightRyderx2]

This is my attempt at it, did it couple months ago. Two light coats and thats it. I mostly wanted to make the chrome less shiny and just put a light tint. Also taped of just the flutes on the turn signal as apposed to all the turn signal.

[inferno56kb]

So i finally took the leap of faith and did this mod. First thanks to everyone that contributed to this thread and special thanks to @xxscaxx who answered any further questions i had. The lights turned out 99% perfect (as good as can be expected without a dust free painting chamber really and i'm totally happy.

So here is a quick write up of my process:

First i cleaned the lights with a dish sponge and dish soap and made sure that there is absolutely no shit left on them (i found that my lights also had a tiny white insect in them though it was more of a small fly than a spider *shrug) then i rubbed the lights with a window cleaning solution (with alcohol) that leaves no residue using a polishing cloth that is supposed to also leave no traces and that doesn't scratch etc. I used the window cleaning solution instead of the mineral oils thing most users seemed to use because that shit doesn't exist in Europe.

Then I masked the whole backside and my uncle (who helped me do the whole thing) used clear wrap to cover the blinker, using clear wrap here is great because it's easy to take off later on and extremely easy to cut so that both sides are 100% symmetrical.





I did NOT wetsand the lights at any point before or during the procedure!

After wrapping everything my uncle started painting them, unlike some users the lights were clear throughout the whole process during every layer, no matt look, according to him those that got the hazy matt look might have sprayed the lights too indirectly or too light, but that's just an elaborate guess.

We used Dupli Color Metalcast Red for the color, for Europeans the only place you can order this from is most likely from Caswell in England (order it via their site, it's cheaper than over amazon) and according to my uncle the color was great to work with and it looks AMAZING! Between layers we waited 13 minutes.

Pictures from the layers (sorry for the bad quality, it's because i didn't have a mask so i just went down to take a pic after each layer was applied. Also i forgot to take one after the second layer)

Layer 1:



Layer 3:



Layer 4:



After the 4th layer of Metalcast we waited 7 minutes before removing the clear wrap from the blinker and then another 8 minutes before applying 3 coats of the Spraymax 2k clearcoat with 15 minutes between the first two layers and then 20 minutes between layer number 2 and 3.

I don't have progress pictures of the clearcoat because that shit is supposedly aggressive as fuck and i like having lungs. so i only took a picture after the third layer. As you can see the lights are crystal clear (apart from some tiny contaminants, but since we were doing the whole thing in a garage it was pretty much unavoidable to get at least a tiny speck of dust somewhere and they are absolutely not visible now that the lights are installed.

After Clearcoating:







No orange peel either with the technique he used for painting. All these pictures are taken about an hour after the last coat of clearcoat with no polishing, waxing or sanding done at all.

I absolutely love the way they look now! Here are some pictures of the lights after letting them dry for 2 days and then finally installing them on the car.

Don't mind the dust, the car is not driven during the winter so that's about 4 months worth of dust on it, that's why it looks a bit weird with the shiny lights









Thanks again for the awesome guides by all the people that have done this! and once more thanks @xxscaxx for answering my questions!

Here is one more comparison picture from before the redding (also pre eibach springs) and clean XD

[allowe]

Can turn signals be red? Like can I get a bulb that's red? Is it legal?


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[8RZ]

Nice work, turned out great and that's how they should've came stock, I hate chrome lol.

[inferno56kb]

Originally Posted by allowe

Can turn signals be red? Like can I get a bulb that's red? Is it legal?


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In Europe it's illegal, this is the reason why i left out the turn signals in the first place. As far as i know it's legal in the US (might depend on state though), but then you wouldn't use a red bulb, you'd just paint the whole lamp red instead, like some US users have done.

Originally Posted by 8RZ

Nice work, turned out great and that's how they should've came stock, I hate chrome lol.

Thanks man I love em! and yeah i agree, stock should be like this

[allowe]

I live in Ontario canada


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