D I Y Painting Oem Headlights, How to paint your factory headlamps

This is a tutorial on how to paint your oem headlights. This saves a lotta money for those who want jdm style lights or any other color.

Project: OEM colored housing headlights
Difficulty: risky if not careful, do not rush.not as hard as you think
Time needed: about 5 hours

required for project:

oven
flathead screw driver
plyers
sand paper
your choice of paint (preferably high temp)
sand paper
a lot of patience


To take the headlights off you need to take off the front bumper entirely.
Pop your hood and there should be clips that hold the grill to the bumper. Remove those clips on each side of
the grill then remove all the screws that fasten the bumper to the rest of the undercarriage of the car. There
should be several that run across the length of the bumper on the bottom. The the last two are the ones right
by the wheelwell. All you have to do is turn your wheel each way to get easier access to those screws then
you just unclip the foglights and the bumper lights and they bumper should pretty much just fall off.
Our headlights are only held up by glue. So you need to soften the glue with heat. To do this, use the Oven, make sure your oven is large enough to support one headlight, you dont want the sides touching any side parts of the oven, thats when sh!t hits the fan! Pre-Heat the oven for 15 mins, set at 200 degrees, then, place the headlighst in for 10 mins, check it all the time. The glue should have a gum like consistisy. Try as much as you can to loosen the shell off with your hands. When it starts to get hard use the flathead screw driver to carefully pry it off.

Now once the cover is off the housing is easy to take off. Its not screwed on or anything so you can just take it out. You will notice that theres also chrome where the turn signal is. theres no need to paint this piece since (I did thought..) it will reflect the housing your painting already.

There is a clear lens attached to the chrome housing. just clips in and out. Take this off for now.

If youve painted chrome before you know what to do.

You have to wetsand the chrome first before any painting can start. Because paint till never stick well without sanding. I used a high temp paint. You can buy this at any hardware or auto store. I used a flat black, but you can use what ever color you want. Do not rush on painting! Its better if you paint inside of the garage to avoid any overspray from winds outside. Do not do one large coat, rather 3 light coats applied to the housing. Give about 20 minutes per coat to dry. Now be careful not to overspray because the curves on the housing can be rather difficult to paint. If you happen to overspray and get drips, wait for the paint to dry and re sand.

Once youve finished painting you can start putting the headlight back together. First clip the clear lens back on to the housing. Then place the housing back in the headlight.
Slide the clear cover back in and line it all up to the headlight. Put the headlighst back into the oven, using the same temps/times as above. Once taken out, I used plyers and a bit of force to tighten the cover back together. I ended up not using any sealer, but you can use it if you think its not sealed enough.

Now time for the other one.

repeat the steps.
then plug all the lights back in put the headlights on and your bumper.



This post has been edited by Stephen on Sep 22 2008, 09:28 PM

Wow!
Nice Job

Thanks for the tutorial

I reckon u took more than 5 hours shane !!! haha
u dont have the car anyway.. so u can take all the time in the world !!
but man.. thats a nice job !!! well done !!

beats the $1050US figure u gotta pay for the real OEM part

Maybe u should offer to do this for others for a fee?
Do u know how to install DDE's

Edwin, wtf are DDE's?? LOL!

Yeah Joe, I always wanted to do this, and thought, this is the best opportunity tp do it, while the car is in the shop!

Also, I Sprayed the Blinker with Black Tint, t hats why they look really dark over in the corner. Might be too dark though, see how we go.

Edwin, thats idea, but naaa! hehe. Kiddo, NO problem mate.

Nice Shance, too bad for me! paid AUD899 at lexus centre! But its been 3 years ago.. Looks the same as the oem ones!..

u know, angel/devil eyes

dde's are the things that bmws have!
rice but nice!

That's the problem.....be original...no need to copy

As the saying for Altezza lights...."don't buy the lights, buy the car"

MAN. . . LOVE THOSE JDM HEADLIGHTS. . .

does any one know if his headlights are painted ones? or special ones u can buy from sumwhere?

these should be painted.
i would do them myself even if you could buy them - 10 times cheaper!!
once you open up the caseing, you can do the housing any colour you want.

Send a PM to MonsterMat in case he doesn't see this post.

yea i did, havnt had a reply tho!

Does anyone know where to land a set of thise Demon Eyes here in NZ? I seen 'em on E-Bay at like USD $too much, but wondered if any importers had their hands on 'em?

yer i'd love to know where to get them here in aus!!! i want them too! they look awesome! anyone know?????

Hey guys - 2 questions... I'm gonna be painting my headlights over the next week or so, and my 1st question is about the Tutorial above - Where ?uestlove says "you dont want the sides touching any side parts of the oven, thats when sh!t hits the fan!", did you mean somehow "float" the headlight in the oven? Or did you mean prop the headlight up with something, and if so, where would it be propped? 2nd question is one of opinion: My TZA's champagne silver. I'm not keen on black as a headlight colour, as I have some blue glow-in-the-dark powder to add to the paint, and it's best on a "lighter" surface... So would you guys say go with the body colour or white for the headlight colour?
Cheers heaps...

I would go for body colour .

Seen the post on colourcoded headlights? Im in love with them hehehe

I just found it! But my.is is down so can't view the pics Has anybody saved them? >crosses fingers!<

OK, well I took the headlights out today. May I ask if ?uestlove has a pod filter?
A tube around 2.5" thick sticking out of my air filter unit made removing the right headlight HELL!
2 Cuts on my right thumb, one on my right ring finger, ALL because of the right headlight.
I reckon if the standard air filter had been out of the way (i.e. gone) it'd have been heaps easier!
Anyway... Lights are out now... I also took out the horns while the bumper was off - may spray them red / other too.
Will keep you posted!

Examples:

we should have some templates for the front headlights early next week before they end up in a green car's headlights

What do you mean Templates? I got into the lights today - here's a quick pic, but I'll be doing a full write-up over the next few days