I was wondering if anyone has found a way to black out the chrome trim built into the tail lights. Something other than covering the tail lights with tint. I cannot stand chrome on my car and i will soon be starting the battle against it. Has anyone ever taken their tail light apart and painted the inner chrome? or covered it with black tape? If so was it very difficult?

I have been looking through tons of threads involving tail lights. Is there any aftermarket tail lights that have NO chrome in them? i have seen black ones but they seem to have chrome trim rings around the lights.

If anyone has any info or if you could direct me to a thread or link i would be very thankful!

 

I cant say that I can help but I do support your war on chrome and hope you succeed

 

Everyone I know that blacked out the chrome either used the film (this is what I did and I think it looks good), OR they sprayed the tails with blackout paint. If you want to black out JUST the chrome without darkening the tail light, you'll need to remove the tail lights, crack them open and use black out tape or something similar on just the chrome. I know other people here have opened the light units somehow so hopefully they will see this and post their techniques. I assume heating the units and prying them open will be involved in that case.

 

i am also very curious about this and would like to eliminate the chrome trim inside my tailights without resorting to tint.

 

altezza makes chrome free lights i think. look into them. i used the 3m tape method but, i have 03 tails so, i think there might be a difference ther. to tell you the truth i dont know.


good luck.

 

no need to heat them.....just careful dremel use. I can open taillights in 15 minutes now that i have had lots of practice. I plan to red mine out

 

Sounds like an EXCELENT How-to, man... If you're planning on doing that any time soon let me know and maybe I can shoot photos for a write up. I know you have mad foto skillz too, though, but simultaneously dremmeling and shooting photos is challenging for ANYONE.

 

no pics even needed

1. put cutting wheel onto your dremel

2. cut a gash as long as the cutting wheel is (just a small gash)
-do this step where you see the glue is. It's pretty obvious. It's right between the clear plastic of the lense and the black plastic of the housing, it looks like spongey black glue.

3. Now you have a slat where you cut into the glue. Put a small flat head screwdriver in and twist so that it begins to break the glue. It will make crazy breaking noises, but its just the glue

4. Once you get all the way around, you cant take the lense off and it will look like this:


5. From there you could easily just tape off the chrome.

6. if you want to paint the chrome black, or want to tint just the red lense....you should further disassemble.If you have pre05 taillights you can take it further apart. Just be careful and pry. There are three attachments that you can see on the back (look like melted plastic waffles). I just broke those by prying up on the chrome and red part. Once those are removed you can separate all of the pieces.
-The headlight consists of these parts:
-Clear plastic Lense
-Red reflective lense
-Chrome ring (plastic)
- Black housing
-Bulbs+circuit board (which should be removed prior to this obviously)

i personally opened them up and tinted JUST the red lense....but that was just a test i never used them or anything. Now i plan to open my durrent ones and paint the chrome bodycolor

 

Rallymini, what did you do about the gash after you put everything back together? will it cause a problem if their is a leak inside the housing? such as milldew, hazing...ect???

i also have a 2006, will i have any problems doing this? i only want to black out the chrome, not the red.

and thanks for that awesome step-by-step! you are my hero! haha

 

I resealed it with a special epoxy just like the factory did. Black RTV seems to be popular for resealing

 

I have heard from someone saying that the new facelift taillights (the ones you have) dont separate as much as mine did. I'm not 100% sure on it since i havent ever tried, but i did hear that from someone.

Even if its the case that you cant separate them, you could use wider tape like they do for the belt-line and just apply it while the red is still attached. Or tape off the red and paint