Well the 2000 spec lights finally arrived last week I was going to change over my rear lights today. I had a look at the tech article here. In that it shows how to remove the rear lights, but not how to clean off the black tar left stuck on the car body.. anyway i think its best to clean up that area before sticking on the new lights, does anyone know what kind of solvent is safe to use to do this?? I saw (i think) dj party favour doing this at a tech day recently but didnt think to ask! cheers
oh and another question.. that black replacement strip we got with the new lights, do we need to do anything special with that like heat it up or anything? Or do we just stick it around the edge of the new lights and bolt them in??
No real need to remove the old tar, the more the better I'd say. But, in any case when I got the crap all over my hands degreaser cleaned it off well. Get off as much as you can with a butter knife or similar then use a cloth and some degreaser to get the rest off. Just be careful of your paint. For the new stuff, my guess would be, run it around where it's meant to go, gently heat it a little with a heat gun (not much) then stick then new lights on.
a degreaser is the go like vbevan suggested get the bulk of it off with a butterknife, screwdriver, etc then spray with degreaser / wax & grease remover & start rubbing it off with a rag. It comes off pretty easy actually. then when putting the new tar on you can get it layed out pretty much right without heating it but before you insert the light its worth giving it a bit of a run over with a hairdryer. I found in one of the corners I couldn't get the light to fight right up close to the body so i just heated it with the light in place & eased it into position. oh & congratulations on buying the best tail lights available for the zed, bar none! pretty soon it'll look like this: cheers, tim
hey thanks for the advice guys! just trying to find a hairdryer at the moment haha one more thing.. once I have cleaned it up, do i stick the black sealant on to the lights, or on to the car body?
put it on the car body,and press it fairly flat or your lights will not sit flush,if you do the bolts up tight to pull the lights flush,you will pull the threaded bolt out from the lights ,just nip it up and kerosene gets the tar off easy
Position it on the car body, that way you can line up the lights and push them into it. Though I imagine you can do it either way, but on the car body would be easier to position.
Yep, that's where you can use the hairdryer to heat it a little and get it a bit runny to get them flush. Just go slowly, take your time and get it right the first time.
Ive alrdy pmed Aidan about my methods but i found putting the tape onto the lights was alot easy then puting onto the car. U dont have to line up the tape with the lights u just put the lights in place and screw it down. but u will have to cut the tape to fit inside the bonding area on the back of the lights. Thats not to hard to do. But everyone has their own ideas on how to do things. so thats just my opinion. As simon said kenosene does the job.
Yeah, the cars are all diff too. For mine, removing the old ones was quite easy, only had to heat them a little. Spikies however, were really hard to get off, had to really heat them lots.
hey guys thanks for the tips.. I just finished changing them over was a bit of a prick of a job, got black tar all over my hands but yeah all done now :zlove: btw i ended up putting the tar on the lights, i think its easier that way to make sure you get it in the right place. Also means you can heat it up while they're on the lights then drop em on... i bit the bullet and bought a proper heat gun from bunnings before: after:
