Headlight painting (complete!)

I have been in contact with a few companies for awhile about sending my headlights in to get the inner housings resprayed with a darker color. All of that chrome just isn't doing it for me. Plus I think the a darker color on the bezel will better accent the cool blue bits of lights.

I dont have $500 to spend on sending my headlights in (plus freight and vehicle downtime of about a week) so I figured I would study some online tutorials and give it a shot.

If you didn't know the Leaf has a 4 piece headlight so instead of starting with the expensive larger section that has the main beam and the height adjustment motor I started with the much cheaper and smaller ($22 replacement cost) rear section. I figured that if I destroyed it then I'm only out 20 bux. Also the car is still drivable this way albeit with a giant hole looking into the hood. Here are some work in progress pics:







More to come...

Update: all finished. Just ran the car through the car wash and no leaks!

Subscribed to see the finished product. I have done this in other cars and the lessons learned I found were:
-Where "baking" works, most of the time using a heat-gun also works and to me seems less stressful to all of the part than putting it in the oven. But both work.
-I have had 1 bad experience in reassembly with re-using the calking/tacky sealant between the main light housing pieces. I went to an auto store and bought some new, tacky, sealant. For the life of me I can't remember what its actually called, but it was a box that had a long rope of the stuff and it was tacky like a sticky clay. I pealed off the old and put a new strip of the new stuff. Pressed the light together and it was perfect.

Interested in seeing how it turns out.

I was thinking about doing the same thing, but might have to wait until I see your experiment. If I had a black card I would just paint that rear paint section in black, but not sure how that would look in the silver or white.

You don't want to dry spray paint in an oven that you will bake food in later!

DeaneG said:

You don't want to dry spray paint in an oven that you will bake food in later!

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The oven is not for drying paint, it is for warming up the adheasive that holds the back plastic piece to the front plastic piece of the light. After removing any screws, one typically needs to warm up the plastic in order to separate the pieces. Then, spray is applied to the desired internal pieces and once it dries, the pieces are put back together.

If you have ever seen a head or tail light with condensation in it, there is a good chance their adheasive stripping was not applied correctly or is compromised.

Some more pics of todays progress. I split the housing with the oven pre heated to 255 degrees and the headlights cooking for 6 minutes. I tried 200 degrees first but it wasn't warm enough to soften the adhesive sufficiently. After splitting the housing and pulling out the chrome part I used 320 grid sandpaper to sand off the chrome then followed it up with a 400 grit wet sand. I then applied a few coats of primer then the first coat of Duplicolor flat back. So far so good. I think the hardest part will be putting the black painted piece back into the clear lens (it actually slides into the clear lens and screws to it) without scratching the freshly painted service.

I also bought some of Nissans butyl rubber tail light adhesive. I could probably just reuse the adhesive that was left on the parts but I played it safe and bought new adhesive strip to make sure there is a good seal and no chance for water or dust intrusion.

Very inspired work! Flat is a very fussy finish to handle. Can't wait to see the results.

cant wait to see how they turn out, I was thinking of tinting that whole back section if anyone has tinted the back tail lights or the front please post pics

So I tackled the headlights today. Wow, much harder. Two people would have helped. I couldn't get the LED assembly out so I took a chance and removed as much wiring and screw on parts as I could and tossed it in the oven.

The headlight housing is a 3 piece design too like the reflector housing (base, chrome, lens). However the headlight housing is so large that the chrome is in two sections. As it stands now I have painted the reflector housing black and I just primed the headlight housing. I think flat grey looks pretty good and I'm almost inclined to respray the reflector with primer and just leave it. Although I dont know how UV stable primer is. Back to work. Here are some more progress pics to hold you over until I can gather my thoughts after this journey is over.

More pics here: http://www.naderassemi.com/photography/nissan-leaf-lighting/

I am curious what the actual LEDs look like that run the main headlights. They are buried under the reflector so can't been seen unless things are taken apart (like you did.) I looked through your pictures, but didn't see one that seemed to show the LED elements clearly. Do you have a picture of what it/they looks like?

By the way, thanks for documenting this. Fun project you came up with.

I bet someone at Nissan spilled their coffee on their keyboard when they started reading this thread!

this pic is taken looking down the hole where the LED's are buried. See the little white chip? I think that's it or at least one of them .

Still hard to see. Whatever they have in there, it seems to work very well!

Seems like you are going to have an awesome end product. I went through your images and couldn't find any good "before" vs "after" shots of the front or rear lights. Closest I found was this "after" one of the front light before the housing was put back on:



Still a work in progress? Have you been driving your car without the headlights all this time?

That's because it's still taken apart. Everything is painted and ready to go back together. I need another set of hands to help me install the painted parts back in the clear lens. While I had the sand paper out I decided to sand the orange reflector to take the shine off of it before I reinstalled it. I wet sanded using 400,600,1000 then 1500 grit.

I started friday afternoon and was out of town over the weekend so I didn't need the car. Although on Friday I still drove around with just the reflector housing out. No big deal. I hope to have it back together tonight and drivable for tomorrow. I'll probably wait until later this week to tackle the driver side.

nader said:

That's because it's still taken apart. Everything is painted and ready to go back together. I need another set of hands to help me install the painted parts back in the clear lens. While I had the sand paper out I decided to sand the orange reflector to take the shine off of it before I reinstalled it. I wet sanded using 400,600,1000 then 1500 grit.

I started friday afternoon and was out of town over the weekend so I didn't need the car. Although on Friday I still drove around with just the reflector housing out. No big deal. I hope to have it back together tonight and drivable for tomorrow. I'll probably wait until later this week to tackle the driver side.

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Awesome. Can't wait to see the finished products. Soon you may have a "headlight upgrade" service like the EVSE Upgrade ;-)

If I was doing this again for the first time I would set aside a full weekend. While it wasn't super hard, I don't think I'd want to do it again. There are just too many things that could go wrong. I am already not looking forward to doing the drivers side. The only thing is that this time it should go much faster since I have developed a routine.

Here is the first side completed.

TEG said:

Still hard to see. Whatever they have in there, it seems to work very well!

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Those four yellow dots should be the LED's.

Very nice. Great job!

Nice!

Looks nice, I still think that black car would benefit more from this mod. Anyone with Photoshop skills?