Thursday, 11 February 2016

FHC resto nr. 46; Rear lights

This is a typical restoration job that is quite easy to perform at home. But to do it properly takes a fair amount of time. Some pictures, first the rear lights as they came of the car ...



From these pictures it is quite clear that a fair amount of dirt has accumulated inside the rear lights over the years. Mostly pretty easy to remove with a mild detergent, warm water and some assorted brushes. But with a car that has been repainted somewhere in the past it is almost inevitable that there is some overspray on the lenses due to inept masking (lazy buggers). I used a surgical knife to scrape of the overspray, after that the affected areas were polished with #1200 and #2000 (wet) emery paper. For the final polishing I used tooth paste, works a treat ...




The housings/reflectors also had collected a fair amount of dirt over the years. So much that I needed heavier equipment to remove dirt and corrosion, and prepare the surface for painting. A friends shot-blasting-cabinet proved perfect for the task ...


After which it was time to add some bling with chrome paint from a rattle can (VHT Plate Finish) ...


Assemble everything using new gaskets ...


And fit them to the car together with the new licence plate and production tags ...




After that I searched through my cable looms today, more on that later ...

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