Clearing the
Headlights and Changing to Black Housing
Click an image to enlarge.
If you only plan to clear your headlights, you can skip this step
and the next step which are about painting the housing.
You'll want to use a high temperature paint, and probably a glossy
finish to match your paint. I chose black gloss engine enamel paint
which I found at Autozone.
If you're super anal, you'll want to
mask off the turn signal reflector sections of the housing. This is
a little more tedious but this way you can just get a nice even coat
of spray paint over the whole thing in one pass. But I was too lazy
to do that and it turned out pretty well.
Take the housings outside and spray paint them appropriately. Here's
what they look like so far. The arrows point to sections near the
reflector that need to be painted by hand since it would be too difficult
with the spray. These parts I painted using a paint brush.
Once the paint is dry, return the housing
to the clear cover and re-attach the parking light reflector and screw
it all back together.
Then, fit the grey backing and the clear cover back together. Pop
the whole thing into the oven again for 10-15 minutes.
Once the headlight is hot, take it out
and push the two parts together to reseal them until the tabs match
up again. You may need to reheat them a few times to get it completely
sealed back the way they should be.
Replace all the light bulbs and fit them
back into the car. Replace the bumper cover supports and screw the
headlights back in. Then, replace the bumper cover, screw it in and
replace the pegs and you're done.
This pic is in the garage so it's a bit dark.
Here's a pic of the passenger side from
inside the garage.
