Well...it came out of necessity actually. I had taken the outer bubble off my tail lights.....and the red covers stayed on for about 3 weeks. Well...a long *** bummp dirt road finally took it's toll, and one of the red covers fell off and cracked in half So I took the other side off...so it wouldn't fall off. And it looked rather gay with just the white bulbs showing (and illegal too). This is my solution. At first i thought it'd look *****....but it looks kind of demonic. After I put the blackout on, we'll see how it looks. What do ya think?
Pics are on the 4th page of my cardomain.com site:
http://members.cardomain.com/tamatt27

 

gonna have to wait until the blackouts are on. I don't like the look of bulbs at all....gotta diffuse that light.

 

Yeah, I'm not a fan of that look either. Looks too "ghetto" to say the least. Personally, if it were me, I wouldn't drive it around until I got a different pair of GTA lights, or, just blackouts...

 

Ohh man...turn the lights down!...I would diffinetly go with the blackouts!...I am in the middle of the same kinda project too, but I am looking to add the grids and use the 3-piece blackout system only!

 

It looked pretty cool with the red cover minus the grid. It's too bad one fell off, you coulda got a clear piece of lexan cut to the shape of the light and leave it like that.

 

I'm going this weekend to Home Depot and picking up some Lexan and window tint....I'm gonna make my own one-piece blackout. I hope it works...but my craftsmanship isn't the greatest.

 

You might want to look into red LEDs, too.. those walmart bulb covers only last so long. They'll harden/crack/peel/bake off eventually, and then you may have lovely white light showing out the back and not know it till the fix-it is in your hands..

Not neccessarily talking the round led bulb replacements either.. if you're going this custom, might not be a bad idea to fab yourself custom LED tail light assemblies. You'll just have to do some experimenting with brightness control.

 

How does that bright white light look in the back if you look into it? I had a car in front of me yesterday morning. Everytime she would turn on the brakes. The brake light would be about as bright as high beams at night. It was horrible! I was guessing her colored cover fell off or something but man that was blinding. Nice car though! How much was it for your front bumper? Looks sweet

Nate

 

You know what else you can try? If you do what you're doing, but stop by Walmart or something, pick up some of that red spray on translucent paint, paint it on the opposite side of the tint, then you can use normal clear bulbs and it will still shine red. Just a thought, I'm sure those LED's arent cheap.

 

In the nighttime pics the taillights look like a 80's Caprice!

Nice car btw!

 

Exactly what I was thinking of. Caprice, or Chev Celebrity.

I don't really like it. But it is different.

 

Do you think that would work? I ordered a blackout for $85 today, and I'd be kind of weary of spray painting it. Does the translucent red spray hold up?

 

Awesome car :hail: i love night rider!. Hey i dont know how the tail lights look in real life but i think the pictures look pretty cool!, hey it something different. :rockon:

 

It holds up pretty well. I got some black translucent stuff on my tailights. The thing is if you only put one coat on, A you won't be able to see it real well, and B it will wear off. I put 5 or 6 coats of the black, and then the same amount of clear, just cause its on the outside and I want it to be glossy. I've had it on there since spring time, and so far, no fading or anything.
The cool thing is, if it doesnt work, or you dont like it, get some lacqeur thinner, and it will come right off

 

The only thing is that the blackout is tinted, i think, on the inside. And if I spray the translucent paint directly on the tint...you think it would mess it up?
I'm getting the blackout from www.adiautotech.com

 

Blackouts are usually made from smoked plexiglas meaning, the dark pigment is part of the plexigless itself, not a coating of some form. There is nothing to mess up by spraying paint on them unless you use a laquer paint which could potentially craze the plexiglass if it is of a cheap azz grade plastic (like cd jewel cases)

 

tamatt27, how did you remove the outer cover; a.k.a. "the bubble"? I just came up with a brilliant idea and was wondering if it was easy to seperate it from the rest of the housing and could it be put back on afterwards with epoxy or is this removal process destructive?

I may go out and look at them later but I'm at work right now being bored....

 

Basically there's 2 plastic tack like things. Lol, that's the technical term for them too. I just took a flathead screw driver and pried the tops off of the tacks (on the top of each bubble) and that destroyed the tacks, butfrom what I've seen they don't do much anymore anyway. Then pried the top part of the bubble off with the screw driver too..if done right it won't destroy anything, except the plactic tacks. I took the tails off when I did this to avoid scratching the bumper. It's not hard at all. It could easily be done put back together with epoxy and be good as new.

 

Awesome, now I have yet another weekend project....