Alright guys i just got my extra set of headlights in today. my plan is to paint the inside silver and do silver eyelids (like af). im still unsure about doing the eyelids. what do you guys think?

ok for those who have opened painted the inside of the lights, do you guys have any tips? im going by the diy in the faq section as my reference. any helpful info that you guys have will help. I plan on painting them thursday.

 

that diy is great. follow exactly what it says and you'll be cherry. and get the WEAKEST masking/painters tape possible.

 

ok is the scotts blue painters tape good? i dont want the tape do rip of the reflective chrome...

 

Not the Cheapest, but the weakest! I think the painters green stuff will work??? Thoughts guys..

 

Yeah it think the blue you want says "delicate" on it....but putting them in the freezer was a good idea as well....other than that the oven part is easy.....its the taping everything off is what i found to suck the most.....

 

are you leaving the chrome or painting it silver? if painting it silver, sand off all the chrome using a fine sandpaper (350 should work well). the more chrome you get off the better. the plastic underneath is black, so you may consider doing a coat of white primer before the silver coats if you want a lighter silver, otherwise no primer will make a slightly darker silver (color coats are semi-transparent).

i used the blue stuff and it worked fine, green should be even better. the diy says to put the light in the freezer to harden the tape. good in theory, but i didnt think it helped at all, perhaps even made it worse. go slow when taking the tape off. i also recommend using a razor blade and LIGHTLY cut the edge where the tape is, so the tape breaks away freely without removing paint with it, otherwise you'll end up with a jagged line. again, lightly...just enough to cut the paint, not the light.

for the eyelids, tape inside and out, and paint inside and out. because its silver, you may want to do 3-4 coats inside as a little overkill to make sure light wont pass through. on the outside do 2 thin coats of color and 2 thin of clear. the majority of color should go on the inside so there isnt a giant raised line on the outside of the housing.

good luck!! its gonna look sweeeet

 

Do you have a backup plan just in case the silver doesn't look to great inside the light housing? I have only seen one set of lights with the inside painted silver to match the truck and it really stood out in a bad way. Hopefully yours turn out great though and you are happy with the end result...

 

i was gonna paint the chrome part silver. and i guess my back up plan would be put the stock ones back on bc i have two sets of light now...

 

I don't know about the 02-05s, but the 06-08 are a PITA!!!! It's nearly impossible to slide them in w/o scratching. There's a DIY on DT

 

Silver is a tough color to match. More so when your spraying out of a bottle! There's sooooooo many different shades and variations of Silver these days. Unless you got the Duplicolor to match your paint code???
One other thing. Since your spraying the inside, this means no primer can be used obvioulsy and you'll see the paint color itself with no clearcoat, just the plastic casing. Clearcoat is what gives the paint it's actual appearance. paint is otherwise dull without it.

My suggestion is to spray paint a window from your garage, house, whatever and let it dry. Do 3 very light coats so it won't run down the window. Then look from the otherside and compare it to what your looking for. paint scrapes easily with thinner and a razorblade so no worries there. This will give you a better idea of what it will look like on your headlights before you go tearing things apart.