When I was replacing a burnt out bulb in my Civic recently, I noticed that the reflective coating was peeling off. Here is a quick walkthrough of what I did to fix this issue.

Here are a few shots of the lamps from behind the bulb holder:





Definitely not good. Luckily, Stanley, in their infinite wisdom, decided to use glue to fasten the two halves of the EK tail lamps together rather than sonically seal them. Therefore, separating the two is just as easy as separating headlamps.

In the oven it goes.



After about 12 minutes at 230 degrees, the glue became pliable enough for the lens to separate from its housing.



With the lens off, I could get a better view of the carnage.



Next step is to remove all the damaged reflective coating. I tried using various abrasive materials but they did not work well or they damaged the textured plastic in the reflector housing. Fortunately, aircraft stripper works well to strip off the paint and does not damage the ABS plastic of the housing. However, it does attack the type of plastic used for the lens so keep them well out of sight.

Use in a well ventilated area and a respirator if possible. With some elbow grease, the housings will look like the following.



I had some difficulty finding a suitable reflective paint that could be applied to the housing. The stuff that the OEMs use is not available to the public according to this post on a classic Chevy forum by some guy who works in the industry. I decided that the next best alternative would be chrome spray paint. Unfortunately, according to various online reviews from people who paint model cars, there isn't a specific chrome paint that is significantly better than the rest. I decided to just buy the chrome paint that is available at any auto parts store, Dupli-Color chrome.

After spraying a few light coats with 15 minutes between each coat, the results came out looking quite presentable.



A quick bake in the oven again to get the glue pliable and the tail lamps came together nicely. If your tail lamps had significant flaking before, you should see an increase in brightness after all this is done.

Please note, this procedure does not work if your tail lamps use a vacuum aluminized reflector coating like the ones found in 99-00 Civic sedans.



Notice that the lens is clear and uses a completely different type of reflector in the housing rather than a fly-eye lens array etched on the tail lamp lens like in earlier models. This type of reflector requires precise optics like those found in headlamps and paint cannot give the same reflectivity as vacuum aluminized coatings.

 

good deal my si taillights are flaking , i might do this also, should i use silver paint to paint inside? or white?