I was getting tired of having a stereotypical 3rd gen around here with one tail
light dimmer than the other. Both of them were dirty and rough on the outside.
The driver side one was full of dirt as well so you could barely see it in traffic.

I decided to pry them both apart to do a full cleaning. I also resprayed the
silver insides to chrome because the paint was falling off in the reverse bulb
section. I used RTV to seal them back together and used my 3M headlight
restoration kit to polish the outsides. They were clear and smooth as glass
when I got done.





Here is the dirty one taken apart


Here is the clean one taken apart

 

Completed






That's tail lights, not brake. Hence the 3rd light isn't on.

 

how hard were they to get apart??

 

Not bad at all I followed the directions for putting LED light boards into the tail
light housings. Those I found here.

While they were apart I peel out all of the old tar sealant and replaced it with a
thick bead of RTV. I had to use red because it was all I had at the time, but
black would look better, not that you can see any of the joints when they're
installed.

 

Nice! Did you repaint the black stripe? and polish the insides? The reverse lenses look very clear.

 

I polished the inside of the bad one by hand, but the other one was already spotless inside. It helped, but that texture you see is on the inside so it makes it difficult to get an even finish.

As for the black stripe I am still debating how I want to paint the stripe because I've had difficulty painting satin colors in the past so I was contemplating going gloss with it. All I did was clean them with Armor-All wipes once I was finished with the rest.

 

Looks very good. The stripe is not a gloss stripe but more of a satin.

 

really good job , i have a spare set that i plan on doing the same with . great to see how mine could turn out . about the black stripe , on my 89R/S (may she R.I.P.) the P.O. had used black elect. tape to make them look like grid or Z tailights . while removing the tape glue i removed part of the black stripe . i then removed the entire stripe . it came off very easy with the polish i used . looked at one tailight then the other , decided to do both . i liked the way they looked with no stripe , just a small but tastfull difference . just my thoughts & experience . good job , good luck .

 

Thanks for the compliments guys

I hope yours comes out good, it wasn't too much work. The little amount of inside
hand polishing did make a big difference because having a crack made the inside
oxidize.

That sounds like it would look really neat, its all the same material under the
stripe anyway. I think it would almost have a Mustang 3 vertical panels look.
Do you have any pictures?

 

sorry , no i don't .....

 

Did you use off the shelf silver paint or some sort of reflective paint to restore the inside

 

Chrome Colored spray paint works great, just make sure you sand smooth everything first for best finish.