Restoring Tail Lights

[Guest lamart91]

Hi everyone, I wanted to start a thread about restoring my tail lights on my 91 MJ. Like many of yours, mine were faded, had minor cracks and one has a broken corner. I had read online about putting headlights/taillights in a preheated oven at 250 for 15-20 seconds at a time until the glue/rtv softens. I didn't want to ruin my only set of lights so I decided to use my dremel instead. I used a heavy duty, by dremel standards, cutoff wheel.

 

I very carefully cut a slot around the edges on the housing side until I broke through the plastic. The plastic will tend to melt pretty quickly so I had to go slow. I used an old kitchen knife to gently separate the housing from the lens as I went around the perimeter. I had to cut through the screw hole mounts on the housing side but I tried to be careful not to cut into the lens. It took about 15 minutes and then I also used the dremel to cut into the glued areas of the internal reflectors to be able to remove them from the inside of the housing.

[Guest lamart91]

The reflectors were faded pretty badly and there was dirt in between the prism reflectors and the housing. I washed everything with dish soap and let dry. I started with the lens first to try to polish them up. I first tried the Blue Magic Lens Restorer.

 

 

It did not work very well and did not seem to be polishing much of anything. I made sure it was shaken and that the paste was thoroughly mixed. Then I tried the Kit Scratch Out. This worked much better and I could see results with just a few seconds of polishing.

This is the other tail light but it shows how badly they were faded.

 

I then used some color sanding paper 1000 and 1500 grit that I got at Oreillys Auto. I wet sanded the lens first with 1000 then with the 1500 and then Kit polish. I was happy with the results.

[Guest lamart91]

I have only done the one lens for a few minutes but I can see a huge difference. I will continue with wet sanding and polishing and update my pics. I will be looking for a chrome like paint at the auto store since I can't find my Krylon Chrome paint can.

My other lens. I will be repairing this with plastic and epoxy.