Okay, so after 1000 grit you go to polishes right?
The lens is actually not in bad shape, but a couple of deep dings. I've used some of the goop that is meant for cleaning/repairing CDs without much luck. I have to get a buffing wheel though.

Thanks for the info.

 

WTF!
I just shattered the lens while drilling a hole for the trip reset. Looks like I'll be making a "home-made" one myself.
What a waste, I was so keen on polishing it up too!
Must have been a little more weather worn, sitting in the shell of a f-body, than I thought.

I think I may look for a nice piece of lightly smoked plexiglass....

 

Careful lightly smoked can make it inpossible to see in the right light...

Here is a link to my thread on my smoked gauge cover.

this light smoking


can look this dark in the right light

 

Yikes! I guess I wouldn't be able to use the excuse "NO OFFICER, I DID NOT KNOW HOW FAST I WAS GOING".......
Just a thought, what about increasing the power of the lighting in the gauge panel to compensate for the darker lens?

is this a :nono:

Thanks for the link and the info.

 

At night I can see the gauges fine.

Its during the day you have to watch it. The sun will get at certain angles and you can't read it even if the dash lights are on. Its what the glare does to that smoked lens. It seems to reflect more or something. The dark backdrop behind it I guess makes it act like a mirror.

 

Has anyone heard of a material that might be used (instead of plain plexiglass) to replace the gauge lens, that DOESN'T refpect the glare? Is there any coating that you can put on plexiglass to make it less reflective?

 

Anyone ever done this with bad white faded parts??? My center section on my Bird is super white. I have a buffing wheel and a few compounds but failed to get anywhere. The one I tried first was some T56 I think tripol, it says it take out scratches in plastic.

 

My center section got all dull as well. I had no luck buffing it. I heard that area was painted. Maybe it is to due with the fact that that area is painted from the back. Maybe the paint fades and that is what the prob is. Thats why I ended up painting the whole taillight assembly. Painting it was cheaper then replacing just that center section.

 

Anyone have an idea on how to do the early style tail lights? No easy smooth surface over here...

 

im gonna try and do mine... can anyone post more before and after pics....????:lala:

 

Take the shifter off the t56 before you try to buff your taillights with it. it will leave some nasty scratches.

sorry just felt like being a smartass

 

Can i use a dremel with the buffing attachment to buff and then just need to buy the compound and some 400 grit sand paper?

 

has anyone tried Meguiar's Plastx? its what i bought and i'm going to try it out

 

i work at an autoparts store and had my eye on that stuff for a while now, let me know how it turns out please!

 

I just polished my lights with Plastix last night...It's really only very effective on the very faint scratches, and even at that, be prepared to spend awhile at it. You definitely need something more aggressive first. However, what did work splendidly was my mother's Silvo silver polish. I did my lenses by hand with Silvo and then Plastix to finish it off and they turned out great....and for those who are curious, don't try a dremel tool...it very quickly left some melt streaks in the plastic...luckily, they buffed out.

 

After polishing the tail lights, would it be beneficial to clear-coat & wax them? Any ideas?

 

I just polished one of my tail lights. It looks great from a straight-on perspective. But, if you look at it from an angle & in the right light, you can see thousands of tiny scratches. What did I do wrong?

 

thanks so much for this thread, I probably never would have thought about doing this procedure.

I just got done buffing the hell out of them and they look a LOT better (day and night difference)

now if it was only this easy to do with my fading paint :|

thanks!

 

Ahh hell yeah! I tried it this way I just put this




and my tailights came out 90% shinier!! OMG does this work!! I WAS SO IMPRESSED! AND PROUD OF MY TAILIGHTS!!! hehehe

TRY IT!!! IT WORKS I GUARENTEE IT WORKS!!

 

Wow! Those taillights look 100% better. They are beautiful. I will definately do this next weekend. Thanks for the idea!

 

I told you all the Mothers Mag polish works... then I follow up with a buffer and wax...

 

i am going to do my tail lights sometime in the near future and was wondering what is the best polish to use i can get at Napa or any auto parts store? Thanks guys and thanks for this tread. I hate my black outs but my taillights have never looked good either so thanks a ton.

 

looks nie, im gonna give it a try this weekedn, ill let u know how it went

 

I want to polish my third brake light after having followed the instructions for my taillights and center panel. My question is my lense is not flat it has a diamond checker pattern. I have the factory "raparound" spoiler with the third brake light. Can I sand it flat and then polish it or should I just polish as is? Thanks for any help

 

very nice post

 

Yes i also did this last week to my 82 tail lights.... looked great for like 3 mins then all the paint started to peal off like i just put stripper on it or something. I dont know exactly why this happened i assume it was the rust paint black was enamel but it didnt say on the can what it was???? Cause when i went to clear them the paint then pealed like crazy.

Anyhow another method instead of polishing your tail lights to get shiny results is to do what i did for my iroc and firebird lights.
-82FirebirdTA was asking what can be done for the older firebird/trans am lights. I start off by washing them down real well to remove wax... with some wax remover (camp fuel, naptha, acetone). Hopeing theres no teflon or silicon wax products on there as im not sure what takes that off. Apply in a small area to test and make sure the wax removal doesnt eat or melt the plastic. Then wet or dry sand them with 400 or so then go to about a 600 or 800 grit wetsand. Then I wipe off again with clean cloth with what you used at 1st. Then i tape off the clear areas useing a rasor blade to trim the corners. Lay down a few coats of black allowing to dry inbetween.... then remove tape and reclear everything with automotive clear coat (rattle can) and theyll come out pretty good. Becareful of dirt getting in them before it drys. heres mine afterwards. !!!!!!!Everyone remeber dont mix a enamel paint then clear it with automotive clear coat. Use all automotive paint products and you should be good.

 

You can make your tail light look like new by using the same polishing compound that you would use to buff a car out with after paint.

Evercoat makes a polishing compound that is used to buff out the cleare coat afetr color sanding. This very same compound can be used to shine up your plastic lenses and make them look new.

Camaro Performers magazine is supposed to have some taillight tech in its up and coming Dec isue.

 

If you have a vice and your drill doesn't need constant pressure on the activator to run, then you can make your own bench grinder.

 

for the polish what should you use, I see some people using mothers mag and aluminium polish, but it clearly says its for metal, lights are plastic, is it still good to use? how is the turtle wax polishing compound?

 

i used meguires plast-x

 

I bought some Novus plastic polish to use on the windshield of my Harley and it works great. It is in oall of the local motorcycle shops around here.

It comes in three grades but I only have #2 Fine Scratch remover and #3 Heavy Scratch remover. I imagine #1 is the polish.

A Dremel tool with a small buffing wheel works fine also.

BTW, For water spots, tree sap, bugs and road film removal on glass I use Duragloss 755 Nu Glass

 

I ve done my bumper lights, look great

 

i will post pics tomorrow, but i did this to my rs, and it's a 180 difference. it's sweet.

 

Buffed one of my taillights tonight, this didn't even take half an hour to do, I also sanded away the lettering:

 

Hmm, while my tailights are just fine I have a problem with the center piece.
Before I began it was scratched and had even started going opaque, buffing it with the same compound helped but there where still small scratches, I foolishly decided to wetsand it with 400 grit paper. It didn't help, it made things worse. Now there are lots of small scratches that I cannot get out through buffing.

What should I do? Sand with finer grit? I tried using 3M #09374 Fast Cut Compound & #09377 Finishing Glaze but it didn't help either, I also used Meguiars Deep Crystal Polish and Scratch-X. I guess it looks better now and you can't see the scratches unless you are close and it's no longer cloudy, but it's not perfect.

But then I screwed up again and accidentially burned through, creating a ugly white nick in the plastic. How can I get rid of that?

 

Oh *** 400 GRIT! You're supposed to use 1200 or 2000 grit. grit you might as well use concrete. follow this link and see if it helps.

http://superchevy.com/technical/pain...al/index1.html

 

Well since I had followed the guide on GMtips for taillight polishing with success(sanded off raised letters with 400 grit) I figured 400 grit would be fine here too.

So higher grit then..

 

I am finally about to try this on the tail lights of my IROC but I have a problem. The previous owner did a sloppy paint job and I have red paint on the outer black edges. Anyone know of an easy safe way to remove this that won't damage the plastic? Thanks in advance.

 

i just used mothers on my turn signal lights and they look so much better. i bought a 4 inch polishing wheel for my die grinder, it works perfect.

 

i will be doing my taillights soon

 

you should rince them out with vinager and water and then soap and water or let them soak for a good bit then rince them out again then use a hair dryer to dry them out or just sit em in the hot sunbefore you putem back in. I did this and it helped a bit.

 

3m Rubbing compound by hand with two old t-shirts worked pretty good on the tail lights. I tried that same turtle polishing compound and it didnt really work. Im debating on whether to clear coat them now, or to wax them.

 

A day ago I used a Dremel buffing wheel and Meguiar's PlastX with "okay" results. I could have called it quits, but I wanted to do the top lip a little better, and I had to get a fresh pad. It was stiffer than the worn one, and that made the heat build up. It was unreal how quickly the heat built up and made a mess. I was ready to hurl.

Today I fixed the melt spots with 320 grit wetsanded. On those spots I followed up with 400, 600, and 800. Then for all of the surface, I used 2000. Once I finished wetsanding, went over it with 3M's Perfect It III clearcoat rubbing compound (Miracle Rub in a bottle - it's saved my paint so many times...) By hand, going over it once brought the luster back from the 2000 grit wetsanding. I just did that a few more times with more force, and then followed up with the Meguiar's PlastX and then some Meguiar's Gold I had laying around. I can still see some very fine scratches if I look from a few inches away, but it is quite negligible. I may do it again at a later date spending more time with the 800 and 2000 grit, or maybe buffing the 3M Perfect It off with a buffer.

The "during" pic shows the haze on the center section from the 2000 grit paper and what the left section looks like with just one application of Perfect It III by hand (after the 2000 grit wetsanding). "After" was taken after the PlastX but before the Meguiar's Gold.

http://www.widetrackdrive.com/tgo/taillights/

 

Can you sand them down, then spray them with some smoke spray paint, then polish them, or will it remove the smoke?

 

Did you see this link above? As long as the paint is cured and you polish with something intended for paint, that should work.

 

Long time for an update but I ended up following most of the tips posted.

wet sanded through many grits then clear coated with walmart 99cent clear


been several years and they still look great. And mine were very very bad off.

http://viragotech.com/XVFinishes/3tl.html

 

Dunno if its just me but you can see the evil ghosts in my center piece making the plastic look bad.