# Weekend Project ... De-badged, Clear Corners, Painted & Polished Headlights!



## richardsc (Feb 1, 2008)

Spent some time this weekend working on my car doing three projects I wanted to do for a while.
My headlight lenses were in pretty bad shape at the top, lots of little dings and yellow "fog".








I bought some 1000, 1500, 2000, and 2500 grit sandpaper from the store, along with some rubbing compound. After about 45 mins of sanding (in ascending grit "order") the lens got a healthy few sets of rubbing compound to come out pretty good!
(on the right is the polished lens, on the left is the unpolished lens.)








(after 2500 grit sandpaper, rubbing compound made them super clear!)








While I had the lights apart, I wanted to do the clear corner mod, which was actually super easy at this point since I already had the lights apart. Just wedged a flathead screwdriver right past the little chrome insert of the lens, and apply a little leverage, and the orange reflector popped right out!








Now for the fun part - I hated the amount of chrome inside the headlight housing. Personally, I really want Allroad headlights, but they are not cheap. And none exist for sale. anywhere.
So, following a most excellent how-to I found on audizine.com forums I decided to paint the headlight housings. I needed to mask off the parts that I wanted to remain chrome, so I was going to use saran wrap and painters masking tape. Unfortunately, I found out quickly that even the masking tape peeled off the chrome:








So then, after putting on my thinking cap, I decided to try the Glad "Cling Wrap" stuff (sticks to itself and magically to other stuff too) ... it worked much better and, if I worked carefully, wouldn't peel my chrome off. So I masked off each light (which took about 25 mins / light)








It was painting time next ... I used Krylon High Heat Black enamel for a flat black, durable finish inside the housing. I sprayed on about 5 coats of paint on the headlight housings along with the chrome inserts in the lens:
Headlight housing:








Chrome inserts on the lens









The finished headlight housing, after unmasking, and quite a few small touchups with a paintbrush.









And for now, here's a crap photo of what the one ompleted headlight looks like:









Last bit of fun for the day, took the super manly heatgun (aka mom's hairdryer) and de-badged the car:
























I've got a few more random images up on my image gallery of the headlight project.
Here's a few photos of the car I took after finishing up:
















































I've got smoked side marker lights from ECS tuning and the "silver" turn signal bulbs in the mail too, so when those get here I'll post some more photos!

_Modified by richardsc at 5:34 PM 5/28/2008_


_Modified by richardsc at 5:40 PM 5/28/2008_


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## EK20 (Sep 28, 2004)

*Re: Weekend Project ... De-badged, Clear Corners, Painted & Polished Headlights! (richardsc)*

Wow, those turned out great! How easy was it to take the lights apart?
I've been meaning to debadge mine for a while now. What kind of degunker did you use?


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## richardsc (Feb 1, 2008)

*Re: Weekend Project ... De-badged, Clear Corners, Painted & Polished Headlights! (EK20)*

I used a hairdryer to heat the silicon that seals the lights up, and it took about 15-20 mins per light to heat up and then peel away the front lens. It wasn't too terrible. Alot of people wrap the light up in a damp towel and toss it in the oven (see that writeup I linked to on audizine) ... but that scared me a bit to do that, and since I had the hairdryer out already for de-badging, I figured why not!
As for the de-badge, I ended up using a piece of rigid plastic to scrape off the big chunks of goo, then I used "Goo Gone" and a rag to wipe the rest off. It took a fair amount of elbow grease and scraping to get all the little bits off, but I do like the way it looks without those badges on there!


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## EK20 (Sep 28, 2004)

*Re: Weekend Project ... De-badged, Clear Corners, Painted & Polished Headlights! (richardsc)*


_Quote, originally posted by *richardsc* »_I used a hairdryer to heat the silicon that seals the lights up, and it took about 15-20 mins per light to heat up and then peel away the front lens. It wasn't too terrible. Alot of people wrap the light up in a damp towel and toss it in the oven (see that writeup I linked to on audizine) ... but that scared me a bit to do that, and since I had the hairdryer out already for de-badging, I figured why not!

That doesn't seem so difficult. To do the same to Honda's it requires a fair bit more work to do the same thing. Like baking for 15-20 minutes in the oven and all that. Good to know it's much easier to do then that.

_Quote, originally posted by *richardsc* »_As for the de-badge, I ended up using a piece of rigid plastic to scrape off the big chunks of goo, then I used "Goo Gone" and a rag to wipe the rest off. It took a fair amount of elbow grease and scraping to get all the little bits off, but I do like the way it looks without those badges on there!

Pretty much the same way I was thinking. Eventually I'll have to buck up and do it.


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## GLS-S4 (Jun 6, 2005)

*Re: Weekend Project ... De-badged, Clear Corners, Painted & Polished Headlights! (richardsc)*

That's pretty cool, and nice job too!
Just a minor side observation but it appears the front bumper skin where it attaches to the driver fender is sitting a little funny. I once had the same problem after dealer messed with it when on warranty, turned out they "forgot" to re-install the three 25 cent plastic fender grommets before re-attaching the bumper skin. Hopefully something simple for the next time you have to pull front bumper http://****************.com/smile/emthup.gif


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## richardsc (Feb 1, 2008)

*Re: Weekend Project ... De-badged, Clear Corners, Painted & Polished Headlights! (GLS-S4)*

thanks!
Actually I didn't remove the bumper for this. Took the lights out (carefully!) right thru the front.
I'm not sure about my bumper, it's been like that since I got the car and I've just not really messed with it yet!








I've got a door blade that's coming off as well, so I'll add those things to my list of stuff to do to the car


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## PerL (Jan 9, 2001)

*Re: Weekend Project ... De-badged, Clear Corners, Painted & Polished Headlights! (richardsc)*

Headlights looks nice! It's funny though, I'd love to have the corner reflectors in my headlights. I guess the grass is always greener on the other side...


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## richardsc (Feb 1, 2008)

*Re: Weekend Project ... De-badged, Clear Corners, Painted & Polished Headlights! (PerL)*

Thanks!
You can have mine







they are sitting in the trash can un-broken!


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## PerL (Jan 9, 2001)

*Re: Weekend Project ... De-badged, Clear Corners, Painted & Polished Headlights! (richardsc)*

Hmm, tempting... What the heck, send them over!
I'll PM you


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## wigglewerks (Apr 15, 2008)

*Re: Weekend Project ... De-badged, Clear Corners, Painted & Polished Headlights! (richardsc)*

Looks good How is the paint holding up after almost a year?


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## ironmule (Apr 11, 2008)

*Re: Weekend Project ... De-badged, Clear Corners, Painted & Polished Headlights! (wigglewerks)*

i joey'd mine years ago, and i like yours better- with the lowbeam ring unpainted. http://****************.com/smile/emthup.gif


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## Veki (Dec 22, 2008)

nice


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## Max_Power_75 (Mar 5, 2009)

*Re: (Veki)*

You did a great job congrats!!! http://****************.com/smile/emthup.gif http://****************.com/smile/emthup.gif http://****************.com/smile/emthup.gif 
I want to do the same - actually the driver's headlight is already sitting at the kitchen's table and my gf is complaining about it








I was thinking about paint the headlights but I'm not sure which look I prefer... but I definitely want to remove the orange blade from inside and clean them up a bit from the oxidation...
Did you apply normal silicon to re-seal the headlights?


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