custom flush mount taillights...

Ok, Ive seen this done on a couple of trucks now, how in the world is it done? are there any tech articles of how to do taillights light the ones on Josh Freemans old yota or like the ones on jens pink s-10. i'd like to know how to do this to make cleaner lookin tail lights.

Edited: 9/3/2005 8:00:27 PM by NO1LOWR

cut the lense the exact shape and mount it flush with the metal, or an option is to just put a lense bigger that the shape of the light you want behind the metal, up against the sheet, so the lense is actually recessed the thickness of the metal where your lights are but its still up against the back of the skin, roll pan, wherever you put your lights. hope this helps./

what kind of plastic/lens do you use to do this? what would you use to bond the plastic to the metal to make it not leak and rust or anything?

Here's a good method I learned from HiTech, the company that makes the LED lights. First, you cut out the shape you want in the sheet metal. Then, you buy clear acrylic with the diamond texture (like the stuff they use in the fluorescent overhead lights) as well as 1/8" red acrylic. You cut the diamond textured stuff about 1/2" larger than the opening of the taillight, thus giving it some overlap. Then you cut the red acrylic to the exact size of the opening. You will glue the red to the smooth side of the clear, which will leave that overlap hanging out there. Then, when you put this piece up behind the opening of the sheet metal, the red will poke through and the overlap will sit up against the sheet metal. You could glue this piece to the sheet metal at this point, or you can sort of wedge it into place using the light box you will make for the lightbulbs to mount to. The red acrylic may stick out further than the sheet metal and might not be flush at this point, but you can actually sand it flush starting with 180grit and subsequently using finer grits of paper until you get the gloss of the acrylic back (the sandpaper will dull the finish). You may end up having to polish the plastic with some rubbing compound at the end. Hope all of this makes sense. It's a little hard to describe w/o pics. You can find the acrylic and adhesive at any store that sells plastic or Lexan. The place I got mine from was TAP Plastics in Sacramento, CA. They might ship if you can't find it anywhere else. IM me if you want a pic of my lenses.

C.

Yeah what he said ^^^^^^^^^^

I have used 3m panel bonding adhesive to glue it in place. Just let the glue set up for 24 hours. It says 12 but I let it set up a little extra so everything cures before I start the bondo work. And I sand the $hit out of it. I just finish up with 320 on the DA and when it gets cleared it looks like new.
Good luck!

I got a set of flush lenses from haganauto.com .They sell the lenses seperate from the light buckets so you could mix and match.Check them out maybe their products will work fo you.