yeah, i'll be going to jdm theory. but my car is nowhere near as clean as yours.. i got all kinds of wild **** going on with my car.. haha. sometimes i look at it and i get kinda confused..

 

great job! I remember doing mine. I wondered how it would look with it all painted black. Turned out great man! So you used an oven? Thats scary to me since I used heat gun. How did you get your hands on a new lens?

 

Hey man where did you get your clear turn signals?

 

You mentioned that the headlights were new. You bought them from e-bay? Which ones did you buy? I see all sorts of e-bay headlights out there that are already blacked out. How is the quality? BTW those look amazing. Great work.

Jake

 

looks great this is on my to do list for sure. My car is black with the Nismo front bumper and I think I like the idea of flat black housings and flat black factory grill (Infiniti symbol left chrome). Anyone have pics or thoughts on that combo ?

My only fear with this project is sealing the lenses back on. Also no one mentioned cleaning with alcohol or anything before spraying the paint ? I assume you all do / did that first ?

 

Mines not that clean Got lots of wonderful chips from driving it everyday. I haven't seen your car yet aside from a few pictures. Sounds like its more original though. Its all about making it your own man . See you at JDM Theory

I bought a new set of headlights off of ebay (aftermarket). I made the clear lenses using a dremel cut out from a florescent plastic cover I bought at Home Depot.

These are the ones I got.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/03-04...spagenameZWDVW

Note: These are HALOGEN lenses, so if you have HIDs (Xenon) you will need to re-use your base and reflectors from your HID headlights. You can't just swap out the ballast and wireing harness as there is an internal piece that is attatched inside the HID headlights. The lenses from the ebay ones do NOT seat 100% onto the OEM HID bases. They do fit perfect as far as the shape and trim goes but we could not get one clip on each light to clip back on. It just wouldn't get down 1 to 2mm more to clip into place. This was a few of the issues we ran into (having to get the wiring harness out of the HID headlights, the one connnection inside the lights was a b1tch to get out as well as connecting it back after the new lenses went on after the bake).

Quality was great otherwise. The pre-blacked out ones, I have read that the quality and fitment is not good.

No, we didnt use any alcohol before we started spraying the primer. Sanded, washed off with water, sanded again if needed, washed of with water. Air dried then used some compressed air to get in the cracks, then primered.

 

ttrank, question for you that I wanted to post here so others can see as well.

When you've baked yours, did you bother removing the wiring harness each time or did you bake them with the wires on and bulbs out?

We removed the bulbs ofcourse but also removed the harness as well. Is that excessive and not needed?

Thanks

 

wow that surprises me. I always clean with alcohol before painting to be sure there is no oil or grease to avoid fish eye in the paint. Guess the sandpaper took care of any though.

are the clips that hold the HID bulbs in not interchangable to non HID housings ? When I got my HID housings to upgrade my halogens I thought by looking at the housings that they were identical other than the HID bulb clips and thought they could be interchangeable ????

 

The bulbs and clips are interchangeble between the two. You can even take the HID ballast and screw it onto a halogen based headlight. I am speaking of the wiring harness. There is a set of wires that comes out of the clip that connects to the ballast to an internal connection inside the HID headlights. This piece cannot be removed without having to take out the reflectors and maybe even more stripping. I didn't bother to find out as it looked to be not worth the extra hassle not to mention we would have had to figure out how to mount it back inside the halogen base.

 

yeah i never understood the stupid design of having the exteral wiring into the housing then having internal wirring. Direct plug and play would've been nice.

 

wow!!! you guys stuck it in the oven, like in the kitchen??? Thats crazy, I used open up the headlights with a heat gun, took freaking 4 EVER!!!! But, the lights look DOPE!!! I might just try that out!

 

Hi Buddy,

I always did them between 185-200 for anywhere from 10-15 min and left the bulbs/wires in. Never had a problem, just make sure to keep them up on the rack and away from the heating elements.

 

Thanks Tim. We were debating on whether it would be okay or not so we opted on the side of caution and just removed them. Knowing this now, it will save me time when I do it again.

Thanks again Tim, always very helpful.

 

Yep, the good ole kitchen oven I think the heat gun method is rarely used...at least on these boards.

 

No prob.

That will save you a lot of time on the next one!!!