HID painting (in progress)

[mjmallon]

Well, its been very nice this weekend in Southern Ca., so I decided to start painting my HIDs today. My inspiration comes from CDsilver02, his lights are gorgeous, and my attempt it to copy what he did here:

http://www.focusfanatics.com/forum/showthread.php?t=152997

I bought a second set of the chrome inserts from a wrecked car, so that I wouldn't have to disassemble the lights prior to painting.

cheers,

-- michael


4/13/2008

I decided to start with a liberal silver coat, to make sure the rings got coated cleanly, and right as I finished the driver side and moved to the passenger, the wind kicked up and messed up some of the paint, so I've got a couple spots I need to wet sand and re-spray, though that won't happen until later in the week.

After I finish the silver touch up, I'm going to take as long as necessary to cleanly mask the rings, then I'm spraying the inserts glass black (duplicolor DSM100) and then of course its a couple coats of clear.

Anyway, here are some pictures of the silver.

Here you can see some of the trouble thanks to the wind

more trouble spots

4/18/2008

Well, I did today what I should have done from the beginning, sand the inserts down to remove all the chrome, as the adhesion promoter simply didn't help the paint stick well enough, and if I'm going to do this, its going to be done right. Anyway, the driver side insert cleaned up beautifully using a scrub brush, some detergent, and some 1000 wet-sanding. There's still a tiny bit of chrome in some hard to reach places, but I have a plan for that. The passenger insert was a royal pain, and there's still more to sand in the tight sports, but I'm going to use an old trick... brake fluid, should take the paint and the remaining chrome right off, then I can go over everything again with the 1000 grit, let it dry for a couple of days, and have a second go at painting this coming week.

Some pictures of the stripped inserts...

4/23/2008

Well, I finished stripping the chrome off over the weekend, and sprayed the first coat of silver on the rings yesterday, and let it dry overnight as I had to work in the evening. So this morning I wetsanded the rough edges on the silver, and am ready to spray a second coat, only to find that every freaking auto shop in town is out of the Duplicolor DSFM341 (silver frost) ERGHHHH!!!!

So, now its on hold until I can find the paint somewhere (without having to order straight from duplicolor at $13 / 5oz can which is a total ripoff!)

Anyway, on to the pictures, the first two are from the weekend, after the brake fluid treatment to strip the chrome, and the following are from earlier this morning, before I sanded.

This was a real trouble spot, and the brake fluid took the paint and chrome right off!

I'll say again, brake fluid does wonders!



For those wondering, I intentionally over-sprayed the rings, so that I have a little more room to work with the black, to hopefully get a super clean line where the two colors will meet.

[Sponsor]

[zx505focus]

cant wait to see it on the car, looking good

[FocusFreak09]

cant really tell in those pics that theres any kind of drips or bubbles or anythings looks good though

[cdsilver02]

Don't sweat the really small stuff. I wanted mine to be perfect and they are just don't tell anyone where the flaws are ;)

[Kayak_man]

Can't wait to see it on your fofo.. good job!

[mjmallon]

updated the first post,

cheers!

-- michael

[shepski]

Well, I'm glad to know there are inserts (as on the Euro facelift lights, etc.). Makes it a more encouraging proposition to do someday (if/once I get HIDs, of course).

But - man! - what a royal PITA! You're clearly as anal as I am...

One thing that's irritating, of course, is that Ford didn't just offer 'em in black in the FIRST place (considering they made the damn BASE SVT lights black). Then again, they're only borderline ugly on silver SVTs...