Interior/Exterior Painting Headlight Housing (aka Joey Mod)
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yes....But how to do it has been a mystery. A lot of people know of the tactic of heating an oven up to 200 degrees and putting the headlight in for like 15 minutes (thats what most subaru owners do i believe), but a long long time ago one of the original members here reported having problems with using the oven technique. Something about clips still retaining the glass, not just the sealant. But obviously it is possible as seen below. The pictures come from a japanese tuner company who has done this mod a lot of times, and has even gone as far as adding angel eyes (like the BMWs have). So they obviously know how to do it, but weren't responding to my emails.
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I'm hoping to get my painted tails back together and installed soon. Pics to follow. I love the look of painting the headlights! Hella offers replacement units overseas for many BMW and VW products that are painted matte so the lights look blacked out when they are turned off. I'd love to try this w/ my headlights but the wife would kill me if she caught me disassembling them and then I broke something. I personally won't be trying this until replacements come down in price or start selling lower on ebay. If someone else try's let us see how it turns out.
#4
One more note, Clearcorners.com offers this service for several cars including the G35's but not the MINI yet. Not enough interest and no volunteers to be first available according to customer support. At $800 a set for LED tails it might be awhile before they get around to more MINI parts.
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Originally Posted by MSFITOY
I've been obsessing about painting mine satin black so I look forward anymore DIY info on this subject:smile:
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#8
You have a pair of older style? Are they Xenon? If so, let me try it:smile: My thoughts was rather than subjecting the lamps to the oven, use an Xacto blade the cut the sealant then remove the residue afterwards and reseal with RTV after painting.
Originally Posted by RallyMINI
I'm gonna finally just do it. I like the new 05 headlights better anyways...so i will try it with my old ones. I just need to get the guts up enough to do it :smile:
#10
Originally Posted by MSFITOY
You have a pair of older style? Are they Xenon? If so, let me try it:smile: My thoughts was rather than subjecting the lamps to the oven, use an Xacto blade the cut the sealant then remove the residue afterwards and reseal with RTV after painting.
I want to do satin black too i think. Although i always thought that adding a black tint to the chrome (in order to achieve a black chrome look) would look cool on some cars. There is always that carbon fiber overlay that i showed you in those headlights
On the subie boards they have a great reccomendation for the sealant. They say you can get it at home depot and Ace hardware, and apparently its the same stuff subaru uses on their OEM headlights. I dont think that removing the sealant is the problem. The problem might just be the intricate clamps and attachments that MINI uses. They tend to require you to pull in different directions and confusing things like that We shall have to see
#11
if you cant tell this topic has been of interest to me for quite a while. Here are the two subaru threads i was talking about
One is just about getting the thing open with some nice pics. They are just removing reflectors and not painting.
http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=384488
And here is their painting thread....the pics are towards the bottom.
http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=749614
And the famous "joey mod" from the dub community. this one is of interest because they suggest a heat gun, which is much less scary than throwing them in a heated oven. Pictures arent anything special unforunately.
http://www.vwenthusiast.com/?pg=joey_mod
One is just about getting the thing open with some nice pics. They are just removing reflectors and not painting.
http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=384488
And here is their painting thread....the pics are towards the bottom.
http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=749614
And the famous "joey mod" from the dub community. this one is of interest because they suggest a heat gun, which is much less scary than throwing them in a heated oven. Pictures arent anything special unforunately.
http://www.vwenthusiast.com/?pg=joey_mod
#15
Originally Posted by RallyMINI
And the famous "joey mod" from the dub community. this one is of interest because they suggest a heat gun, which is much less scary than throwing them in a heated oven. Pictures arent anything special unforunately.
http://www.vwenthusiast.com/?pg=joey_mod
http://www.vwenthusiast.com/?pg=joey_mod
#16
I did this to my Kia Sorento. It took longer to scrap the old sealent off than anything else. It was pretty simple, I only heated the oven to 170 degrees F. I had though about doing it to the MINI but I bought a practice Light for the Sorento for $35 shipped. I doubt I could get one for the MINI that cheap.
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