Blacking Out Headlights, How to

Yeah I seen those; honestly not a fan of that... looks like an afterthought...

 

Everything on that truck looks like an afterthought IMO haha.
I see your in Lake City, my wife has an uncle by marriage & his parents live there.

 

All the guy did was add an led strip about a foot long to the bottom of the headlight and hide the wire, if I can find the pic I will show you.

EDIT: found it http://www.tacomaworld.com/forum/2n...e/195136-retrofits-demon-eye-audi-lights.html

 

yeah not much up here but prisons and cow pastures, lol

ah, yeah that's what I was talking about. I'd like to see it without the center amber running light on... mine's an 06, so it has the outer amber lights as the running lights and the inner amber lights are the turn signals only

 

thinking I might try it, just for something different... what they heck I got two sets to mess with, if I don't like it I'll redo it

going to Oznium now to order two 1ft strips of the side emitting LED's in neutral white; cool white looks too blue to me and warm white is a little too yellow...

was going to get this done this weekend, but it'll have to wait to get finished until next weekend since I have to wait on the LED's to come in

 

Well, just ordered the LED strips and got priority shipping (a whole $1.40 more ) which at the soonest would be a 2 day delivery. Oznium's been FAST in the past for me for shipments, so maybe I'll have them Friday afternoon or Saturday, in which case I may have these babies done this weekend after all

Actually put in a $75 order with them just now... Ordered a bunch of blue LED's and LED modules to finish changing the colors in my climate control unit, clock, and add some accent lighting in the cab just for the hell of it

 

phase 1 done

I like having this second set to work on; I can take all the time I need to with them since my truck isn't sitting in the drive way with no head lights right now

300 degree preheat, off, then in for 9 minutes, and they practically fell apart! SUPER easy. Anyone that's sweating the baking procedure, don't; it's a piece of cake (no pun intended)

 

That's the part that scared me the most. Ok, now I'm doing this.

 

my only issue right now is that I got some of glue on the lens and that crap is really stuck on there...

but I buffed the lenses before I brought them home from work and now that I have them separated I can see that I actually buffed off some of the clear coat... so I may hit them with some 2000 or 2500 grit sand paper and get all of the remaining clear coat off and bring them back and give them one more last good buff. we'll see, I'll get the glue off somehow and see what they look like when everything's back together

shipping says my LED's should be in tomorrow, but I'm not going to get them done if this weather doesn't let up and let me paint!

 

Progress













Tip: I know this has been mentioned before, but I'm going to bring it up again Remove these two screws on the bottom just in front of the tire. Then flip the inner fender liner up and out of the way for all the arm room you could ever want to get up to that stubborn hidden bolt. Also, if you're running oversized tires as I am, it'll help to turn the tires to full lock in the direction of the side you're working on.







Bezels painted up, getting ready now to bake the lights I pulled off the truck and open them up. All I really need from them is the back half





Going to let them cure overnight though, because a friggin bug got stuck on one of the bezels when the paint was wet, and apparently struggled like hell to get off... found him stuck to it when I picked them up after letting the 4th coat sit for about 30 minutes... so I'll have to sand it a little and hit it one more time with the paint...





Also got my LED order in today, so these babies are getting Audi lights






Lastly, here's the trick to getting the lights of the truck; I know some were struggling with it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CO0kP_Bssac

 

well that was a complete waste of time, effort, and about $25...

First thing this morning I popped the amber lenses back in and that scratched the paint all to hell. I figured I'd just tape off the lenses and then hit those areas when some sand paper and that little area that I needed to fix and respray them one or two more times. I got about half way through the first coat on the first light and ran out of paint... Got more, resprayed that light, then resprayed the other, and the finish got even worse than it looked before I started... Got pissed, said F this, threw (with some force) those bezels into the trash can and broke them into several pieces, and put the truck back together stock...

This is the exact reason I got the second set of lights to do the painting on; painting never comes out right for me for some reason... I can sand, spray adhesion promoter, prime, paint in several light coats, basically take all the right steps, and NOTHING ever comes out the way I want it to... I'm almost at the point now where I'd pay someone to paint a pair of bezels for me...

 

got another set of lights from work, going to attempt it again and see if I have better luck, lol

 

It's all about patients and prep, if you were angry enough to throw them and break them into pieces, I do not recommend trying it again.

 

yeah it was a p.i.t.a on my 06 and i had a problem with it messing up the paint when putting it back together but on my 2012 i baked the headlight bezel before putting it back together and let it cool down for an hour and had no problems with it .. but it was a lot harder when i did my wifes 2010 mazda3 but it looks great and im happy with the outcome! It is all about patients!! took me from 9am to 5pm just to do hers..

 

well I did get a little impatient last time, and I only broke them after the paint came out crappy the second time, lol. so I'm definitely not going to get in a rush with this second set

 

Just bought a set of 06 lights no hazing for $30 let the BHLM finally begin i'll be selling my other set either as is or BHLM set what do you guys think. I enjoy doing this thing regardless of time.

 

I'm at this again. These headlights will NOT defeat me twice

First one is done and I'm going to let the paint cure for a couple days (probably all week) and the second is getting painted right now.

 

Now to let them cure

 

Finally wrapped this up today, putting the truck back together in the dark was well worth the wait to do it right; they came out great! But of coarse it was dark and that might be a different story tomorrow when I see them in the sunlight, lol.

The LED strips look pretty blue in the pictures, but my camera takes horrible night pictures; I assure you they're not as blue as the camera makes them out to be... They're MUCH brighter than I thought they were going to be though!



























Now to do something about that grille...

 

Nice bro!!!!