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

[richardsc]

Been working on my car all day today, and am happy with the results so far. (Please bear with the images slow loading, they are hosted from my home cable connection!)

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.)


My arms got too tired for me to do the other lens tonight, so that'll get finished up tomorrow.

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'll finish up tomorrow and take some good photos. And YES, I know I need to get the silver turn signal bulbs. Nobody in my area carries them, so I've got to order them online

I've got a few more random images up on my image gallery

cheers, hope everyone is having a good and lazy weekend!

-Charles

[thomas1978]

(that burn on the top) bad positioning of the lamp, because when you put your hand on the top of the headlight, you can feel the heat coming from the area between headlight, and the hood. Mine is burned badly, and even the black surround is melting.

[audikillsbmw]

[richardsc]

I'm not sure what to do about that, but I do agree with you on the heat issue, as I've noticed the same thing.

[iProDrive]

Also if those are HIDs throw some 6000k bulbs in there, and while you are at it, put in some DRLs (daylight running lights).




The DRLs



Clicky

[A6sport]

[DD_(in Germany)]

[MrFine]

[A6sport]

[richardsc]