Well I finally decided that I would clear my headlights. There are already a few threads that cover the process pretty well but I made a few mistakes that should be noted. I want to add that the thread started by PPLAPW is very informative and helped me a lot.

First, make sure the headlights fit into your oven. I have two different ovens and the headlights barely fit into one of them. If you have to tilt the headlight to make it fit into the oven I would suggest laying down some tinfoil if any part of the headlight is close to the heating rods. Otherwise, this is what happens.



and



Its hard to see in these blurry pictures but the white area is not normal.

I got lucky and the heat mark only affected an area of the lens that is not visible once the bumper is put back on. If I left it in the oven any longer it would have burned the front of the lens. I put the headlights into the oven and then set the temp at 200 and left them in for 20 min (preheat included). That seemed to work out just fine.

Once the headlights are nice and hot remove them (oven mitts help) and place them on the counter, or wherever else you want to do the work. It is much easier if there are two people involved in this process as it was rather difficult to separate the lens from the headlight case and scrape away the melted silicone. Its very messy and gooey. Be careful when scraping away the goo not to have any fall onto the chrome reflector (fucking shit happened to me and there is a smudge that I couldnt remove)

Once you have the lens separated and you break the amber thing off its important to glue the chrome strip onto its support. DO NOT USE GORILLA GLUE. I shoudl have known this...gorilla glue, when it dries, foams. I didnt realize this until after I had already sealed up the headlights. My driver side headlight has a little bit of the foam just under the chrome strip, its annoying and doesnt look great. I would suggest expoxy (I didnt have any) or superglue (didnt have any of that either). Oh well.

Also, when sealing the headlight back up make sure to push the lens as far in as it will go, pop it back into the oven to get the silicone all gooey again, remove, and keep pushing until the lens sits flush with the case. I put a shitload of silicone over what I didnt scrape off. You wipe off the excess. Once it dried I went over the seal again with a caulking gun and the silicone, then smeared it around with my fingers until there was a nice seal. Its messy but cleans up nice. Also, you dont see any of this when the headlights are installed.

Start to finish took about five hours, including drying time. It was much easier than I thought. Just to reiterate: 1) Watch for burns on the lens 2) have an assistant if possible 3) dont use fucking gorilla glue 4) there is no such thing as too much silicone

Here is the final product



And installed





If I were to do it over again I would probably black out the headlights instead of just clearing them. Too late now, I dont mind the look but I think blacked out will look better on a black car.

 

Yes, I agree black on black!! Man, I would love to do this. But something about baking my headlight's!!

 

I think it looks good, have you thought about using the chrome strips (door edge guards) for the front bumper? give it some contrast

 

Ive put all bumper plans on hold for the moment. My friends dumb ass girlfriend backed into my cara few months ago and put another dent in it. I'm waiting to see how I resolve that before I do anything to it. I've thought about putting on the aspec lip, getting another stock bumper, or just getting the RJ bumper. I've thought about putting just one strip on it though...I am going to paint the grill, rather have a body shop paint the grill, next weekend so I'll see if I want to add anything to it

 

Nice! Looks great I like clear as well as blacked out. About using super glue someone had used it to glue the strip but it hazed and a mess! I used epoxy and it worked great.

Sucks that your lens' burned. That didnt happen to me, It might have to do with the coil/gas/heat placement in the ovens.

Looks great!

 

nice job! I like how it looks whether blacked out or not.


great info

 

Honestly, I was planning on blacking out but when I was at Kragen buying the silicone I didnt bring enough cash for the engine paint. Figured cleared would work out....dont mind it, just have to do something about those turn signals. Yeah I saw your epoxy note and figured gorilla glue would do the trick...oh well. I'm still glad I did it though

 

Looks nice and clean. Nice job!

 

subinf, did you reuse the silicone that was already on the headlight or did you take all of it out and lay down your own silicone when ...if so, which did you use.... btw looks really good. im realizing the fact that if i want to do this mod, im gonna have to do it myself...

 

Both. It was difficult to remove the factory silicone. I took a knife and scrapped off as much as I could from the lens. I laid down my own line using Black RTV Silicone Adhesive Sealant. Picked it up at Kragen. I bought a big tube of it, the type that is used in a clauking gun (highly rec. to use that). I pushed the lens into the housing as much as I could and then popped the whole unit back into the oven, that way everything gets all warm and gooey. When I pulled the housing out it was much easier to press back into the original position.

 

Very clean looking!

 

that looks great, Im getting closer and closer to doing this....

 

I was really worried about doing it, whole oven thing with the headlights, but it wasnt that bad at all. Its time consuming and your fingers get slightly burned when playing around with it right after it comes out of the oven.

Also, since I didnt catch this until now, I mean caulking, not clauking. No morning cup of coffee yet

 

ANyone have pics of a TL with blacked out headlights on a WDP? Tryin' to imagine what that would look like, but it's hard

 

Theres smoked headlights on WDP in this thread......

https://acurazine.com/forums/showthread.php?t=128532

And theres cleared headlights on WDP in this thread....

https://acurazine.com/forums/ramblings-12/started-taking-no2-today-123705/

 

looks nice, see you at the meet!

 

dude i SO want to do this but theres just SOMETHING i know im going to do wrong

 

It looks a whole lot more sexier with the cleared HLs good job! I wanna do mine but im afraid I might screw mine up and ending having to resealing them again.

 

It rained today and so far so good. It hasnt been enough time to tell if its fully sealed or not, but I figure even if water does breach the seal I'll just pull the headlight out again and go over the outside once or twice more. I think it would be a pain in the ass to do over only because my fucking oven isnt big enough and I dont want to bake the lenses any longer.

 

How long was it in there to get it warm and gooey? And the temp is at the same level, 200?

 

You bake the headlight for 20 minutes. That includes pre-heating. And yes 200 degrees.

 

That looks amazing.

 

boy Ill tell ya, the ends sure do look like it justifies the means. I just priced out new head lights just in case. if I mess up thats a 550 dollar fuck up..

 

ive been looking at headlights as well, on ebay though. the stupid gorilla glue bubbles bother me a lot. on ebay i saw single ones for 200 or so...still a lot but unless you mess up the original im sure you could sell that to mitigate some of the costs.

 

I mean after the orange reflector is out and want to seal it back up...is it another 20 minutes too?

 

Yeah I put them in for about 20 min...didnt need to get as hot, i dont think, but warm enough to make it easy to push the lens back into the housing

 

TO whom it may concern,

I am trying to get my headlight clear for Acura TL. in Santa Clara,CA.

Ragin

 

You would need to do them yourself or find a shop that is willing to do it. do a search for 'Rego Sport' I believe there in SoCal and do head lights. A couple members have done theirs there.

 

hey subinf, did you keep the stock turn signal lights in the front ..?? or did you replace them with an amber light... the more i think that i want to do this, the more i think that i may have a problem passing my car through inspection..... if in fact that is an inspection issue, maybe not... anyone else that has cleared their lights feel free to chime in with their solution or experience.. thanx..

 

im looking for some amber bulbs, still using the stock ones now.

 

Is that an inspection requirement in CA? Do they have to blink amber?

Hey Subinf, if you're looking for ambers, look at this site www.lightlens.com. A guy at work bought his from them and it is pretty bright. Not like the sh_t Zax and I got on ebay.
It would match your clears (chrome) look if you're not planing to black it out latter.

 

^-thanks for the link. I actually just bought some earlier today online, cant remember the site off the top of my head and the history is on another comp. I dont think we (in CA) need ambers for sure. This was discussed at length in another thread. Ill look at the regs on the dmv's page later.

 

sorry for the questions but i cant find the thread dealing with this... what size bulbs are the turn signal bulbs??

 

7443 (dual filament).http://lightlens.com/coloredbulbs.htm

LB7443CA if you're looking for the cleared chrome

 

i noticed that the bulb on the website was 12v 27/8W
the stock ones are 12v 21/5W

 

Aye sub, after you sealed up both headlights, how long did you wait(2hrs,4hrs,24 hrs?) to reinstall it back on the car or did you do it right away. Can you tell me the actual time taking out the headlights to reinstalling the cleared headlight back on the car. I'm planning on doing this tomorrow in the afternoon and I might need to use the car in the night time. thanks bro

 

i let the adhesive sit off car for about an hour...or until it wasnt sticky to the touch. the silicone says it needs to cure fully for about a day, i figured it could do that while back on the car. the entire process was probably 5 or so hours. you can probably get it done faster, i didnt have anything else to do that day so i spent a lot of time posting on AZ in between the steps.

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/7443-...QQcmdZViewItem
these are the ones i bought. i just put them in today, if i have time tonight, i'll take pics so you know what they look like.

 

how do you get the headlights out? it won't come off...do i have to yank it out..i've gotten all the bolts out including the bottom silver metal part

 

make sure all the top bolts are out. it should slide out under the fender fairly easy. there are some instructions on how to remove the headlight so you can reference which bolts you have already removed and see if there are any that you missed.