Painting Clear Tails???

purplemx3gs · Post by **purplemx3gs** » May 9th, 2007, 8:07 pm

I got this sweet deal on some new Altezza clear tails, but i want them to have the black background..., so is it possible without making a mess, to paint them black? If so, could someone please guide me through some steps. If not, what would tinting them look like? Any pics would be great!! Thanks in advance!

96mx-3 · Post by **96mx-3** » May 9th, 2007, 10:08 pm

jsut a guess...but i think you could take off the lens and then tape off the lights and paint the chrome black ? or jsut paint the lens light coats tho..inside or out would work..

purplemx3gs · Post by **purplemx3gs** » May 9th, 2007, 10:18 pm

how easy is it to get the clear lens off?

Post by **Mooneggs** » May 9th, 2007, 10:40 pm

I had thought about doing this because I thought it would look cool... but I ended up painting the outside translucent red. Anyways you could take a hair dryer and work your way around the entire light and I would imagine that would get the lense off. It probably wouldn't take more than 20 minutes a light (maybe less). Then it would be just a matter of taping off the bulbs and spraying. Then re siliconing the lense back onto the light.

I'm actually about to help a friend tomorrow night do this exact process only on some ford lightning altezzas. I'll take pics as we do it so you can have an idea of what complications we encounter (if there are any). I'll even list the materials we use...

Hoodzy · Post by **Hoodzy** » May 10th, 2007, 12:40 am

they sell black ones?

Nd4SpdSe · Post by **Nd4SpdSe** » May 10th, 2007, 9:35 am

Tney do sell black ones.

I painted the chassis on mine. How, when I got my altezza's, they had no lense (didn't need them), so I don't know how easy/hard it is to remove altezza lenses, but I didn't see any glue residue, so it looks easy, but i may be wrong. Unlike the stock tails, used the oven trick to weaken the glue, but melted 2 tails in the process, until i got it right

As for painting, mine we're carbon fiber, but I wanted the chassis black, so I repainting them using a gloss Tremclad (used the gloss to make the black more reflective to stand out more)

You can check out the process in my worklog:
http://www.mx-3.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.ph ... &&start=15

Now, I left the individual light lenses on because I was cutting them off, but I did tape the reverse/reflector lense.

purplemx3gs · Post by **purplemx3gs** » May 10th, 2007, 9:35 am

lol, ya but im getting these new ones for 50$$ sweet deal id say considering she said she paid around 500 for them a while back. She said she put them on, and took them right off again cuz she didnt like them, had them ever since trying to sell them. there isnt too many MX3s around here so thats y i get to have them! Man that looks sweet above me !!

Post by **Mooneggs** » May 11th, 2007, 2:02 pm

Well if you don't want to put them in the oven you can always use a hair dryer (it just takes longer) and a flathead screw driver. These are the lightning lights we did last night. Tonight we are going to silicone the lenses back on. The reason he chose low gloss black is because the lense will provide enough gloss and reflection so he didn't want overkill.

we basically heated up the edge and then used a flathead screw driver to pry the edge up and worked our way around. These lights were about 6 years old so there was a lot of dried silicone still in the edges that we had to work on getting out. It's important to get it ALL out so that when you re silicone you will have a good sealed fit.

Anyways this was the process and materials:

purplemx3gs · Post by **purplemx3gs** » May 11th, 2007, 2:49 pm

I want a dark matalic gloss black for mine, so would the Canadian Tire Car Matching Paints work?

Urbanconcept · Post by **Urbanconcept** » May 11th, 2007, 6:42 pm

Nd4SpdSe, I think you may have bought my old altezzas off slade (I cant remember his board name)?

They look like the ones I repainted lol. I removed the clear lenses because one of them was completely broken. It was def a huuuuuge PIA to get the glue/silicone off of them. I spent a lot of time working on them because I wanted it to look clean. The black looks good on them. What are you doing with them now that you've cut off the inner lenses?

So if you want to take the lenses off, its not tooo too difficult, just take your time. I didnt have to take my time and I broke them even more by accident lol.

purplemx3gs · Post by **purplemx3gs** » May 11th, 2007, 9:29 pm

ok, i bought them, broght them home and now i have a problem....

on only the left taillight, the marker and of two of the other lights on the inside look tarnished or something on the chrome, so what would happen is, those ones would look darker at night (and at day) and would look funny and for some reason, i cant get it off even with chrome polisher (it just makes it worse!). Can anybody please help me or that was 50$ down the drain!!!!!

Urbanconcept · Post by **Urbanconcept** » May 12th, 2007, 1:47 pm

paint them some other colour instead of crome.

Nd4SpdSe · Post by **Nd4SpdSe** » May 13th, 2007, 12:32 pm

Urbanconcept wrote:Nd4SpdSe, I think you may have bought my old altezzas off slade (I cant remember his board name)? They look like the ones I repainted lol. I removed the clear lenses because one of them was completely broken. It was def a huuuuuge PIA to get the glue/silicone off of them. I spent a lot of time working on them because I wanted it to look clean. The black looks good on them. What are you doing with them now that you've cut off the inner lenses?

Lol, ya, that would be them, I dont remember them being painted, they were the faux CF tails, if i remember right, lol, been almost a year since I did that mod.

It's not what I'm doing but what I've done

Urbanconcept · Post by **Urbanconcept** » May 13th, 2007, 6:15 pm

That's a great idea for custom tail lights. When I bought them they were black altezzas. But as I peeled out the sealant the black paint started coming off. Those tails are actually crome under the original black. Then I painted them in a dark silver colour.

PS the taillights look good. Nice job. I can't wait to show everyone my custom setup. I had a post about them before, but they should be finished very soon, since it's now the summer!!

92blackmx3 · Post by **92blackmx3** » May 14th, 2007, 9:33 pm

hey purplemx3gs are ur from bwater im right im from down in liverpool i think i know who u got them lights from i was gonna get them but didnt have the money does she drive the silver mx3 with the full kit and spoiler