gambling on burnt clear headlights.
 

Well,
I took a gamble on some used clear headlights from an 03+ boxster or 996 or whatever. the inner lenses look badly burnt but the outer plastic lens is good.
i'm hoping to open them up and replace the inner lens. if that is not possible, i will open up my current ambered headlights and take the inner lens out of that and build a nice set of clear headlights. price was right. let's see if i can get them to work.

saw those on ebay..hope it works out for you.

pics if possible
 

Good luck on this mod. If you can, try to document the procedure of opening up your amber lights if it comes to that. Don't know if you will have sealing issues but it would be interesting to see if these lights can be disassembled and put back together succesfully.

AKL

Hope you have a big oven for the experiment......

http://www.renntech.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=11457&hl=oven

Yeah, I saw those on ebay. They looked really burnt. Hope you didn't pay much.
Good Luck

$80 clear headlights.
 

hoping to get some pics later on.
but the experiment paid off.


1. baked the 03+ clears with the burnt lenses and remove the clear outer cover piece from them.

2. baked my headlights, removed the clear outer cover piece w/amber, scraped all of the old silicon seal out, placed a new bead of silicon seal, installed new clear piece.

a side benefit of this is that the clear headlights from porsche have an amber insert that some people have used a soldering iron to remove. these pieces are already clear from the old amber style. so now i have clear lights with clear turn signals. also installed a chromed amber bulb, so they still blink amber. i am very happy to be amber free. also installed my 550 edition tails on the same day.

also washed car a few hours after install. no fogging. let silicon cure for 24 hours before installing back on car. the sealing process seemed the same on these lights in general. the only annoying thing was removing the old silicon bead. it was dry and rubbery unlike the seals i've seen on subaru and vw.

here's the before pic.
http://img158.imageshack.us/img158/7875/carmc4.jpg

here's the lights as purchased
you can see the inner lenses are burnt pretty bad.
http://img511.imageshack.us/img511/8627/77383aq1.jpg

after:
http://img511.imageshack.us/img511/4...lverboxxp0.jpg

and the tails
http://img505.imageshack.us/img505/2...boxbackjw4.jpg

where did u get the new lenses from? n let's see the after picture

got em from ebay for $82.
thought i mentioned that in the story.
after pics are posted.
amber free!!

Great job of cleaning out the burned out part of the lenses. Good for you. Saved yourself a lot of money, as used clear lights normally go for around $500.

Hi

Nice job :cheers:

Box looks sweet!!!

pertaining to the orange ones, the clear part of the lens cover seperates from the orange?
im a little confused. :confused:

No DJ, hes talking about the orange filter thats behind the lense cover on 03+ headlights. Not talking about the Amber portion of our lense cover on thru-02 headlights.

Is that a picture of the stock tail lights?... they look amber to me.

Fyi
 

Currently Im talking to a Custom plastic mold injection company about taking my current amber headlight lens cover and creating a completely clear mold of it... Ill update you on the talks I have with them, Currently im waiting for a call back by the Automotive department of the company, and should be able to get a sample made by them. They normally shy away from clear plastics because they dont always come out 100% clear but I mentioned that I could buff and polish the surface, I just cannot have bubbles or creases inpregnated into the plastic... Ok keep you posted. FYI minimum order might have to be 1000 units to make an order :-0

Red tail lights are from the 2004 special edition.

Oh i know where they are from and that they exsist LOL, i was just saying that the image he posted of them on his car look slightly amber to me... i wonder if they were amber and resprayed with red tint spray?

Nice work humara thanks being one of the first to take on this task, the result is great, especially for $82. Those were some seriously burnt lenses!

Thanks to this site, toolpants, and a thread over at renntech. i knew from my subaru modding experience that it could be done. I think I got enough info from a few threads here about how the porsche lights work and how they're put together.

A couple of questions seem to keep popping up. I did not clean or fix the burnt lenses, I replaced them. The burnt set that I bought we're fried, burnt and melted. (this is the inside round lens) but the outer clear cover was fine. Removed from burnt set, removed my amber pieces from my good headlights, replaced cover with clear cover. voila.

Got em directly from suncoast. they don't look amber in real life. maybe its the picture? although they don't really look amber to me in the pic either.

^ Strong candidate for post of the month. :cheers:

by your choice in exterior color I see you are a very shrewd and intelligent buisnessman. :D

My 550 tail lights can sometimes look amber in pics taken in direct sunlight.
http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f3...kansas1106.jpg

But I assure you they are red. I just love the look.
http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f3...s/DSCN2287.jpg

550
 

I agree. I am really diggin' the 550 tails.

here is a shot of what i was dealing with.
the person i bought these lights from had some ghetto 100w blue bulbs. as you can see, the bulbs did a pretty good job of not only burning the lenses, but actually melting them.
http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/5690/img0239qg1.jpg

something not to do to your car.
 

forgot i took pictures of the culprits.
i'd say it's pretty good advice to NOT install these headlights.
notice, the lights actually got so hot, that they ballooned at the ends.
keep your on ebay for others that may have melted their lights. i've actually seen another set on ebay sell for a similar price.
http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/1854/img0223wm6.jpg
li-tech h7 100w. hmmmm. almost twice as many watts.

http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/7395/img0222gl0.jpg
i'm guessing they didn't arrive like this

http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/8424/img0220xz5.jpg
melty. quiznos is delicious*
*not really.

another pic
 

Here's a pic of the channel (groove?) that the sealant lives in. on some cars, this is reusable. on my particular 2000, this silicon was not resusable. even at 250 for 15 mins, it was pretty solid and not very melty. the entire channel all the way round the case had to be scraped and cleaned. it was the least fun i've had with my car. about 1 hr per side.

http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/5885/img0233wc4.jpg
also notice the meltiness.

more pics.
 

Ok, this will be the last of the pics. I've become seriously obsessed.



http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/9758/bfrontmz8.jpg

Well, I did the mod with the headlights and pretty simple to be honest. I left it in the oven for 20 mins at 250 and which made the process alittle easier.Once I got one part of the light lense loose the rest was pretty easy to pry off . I am just waiting for the clear corners and then they will be complete. I will let the forum know if I decide to sell them since I have really thought of doing the 996 front end converision