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Tail Light Restoration - 67 GTO


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The tail lights on my car have always been an issue for me given the appearance of the rest of the car. It seems the car was painted with the tail lights taped, but not very well as there was some overspray around the chrome trim and the paint is a little thin around the openings for the tail light lens. I decided it was time to do a little detailing so I removed the tail light assemblies and started the task of cleaning and repainting. Also my son-in-law followed me to a local car show Saturday and he noticed that the inner light was not as bright as the outer lamp. After removing and dismantling of the lens from the bucket I realized the old reflective material was shot and someone had try to redo it with silver paint..You can see from the attached pictures how the assembly looked as removed from the car, the condition of the inner light bucket, and what things are looking like now. I still need to deal with the paint around the openings in the rear panel, and I'm waiting for a couple of new rubber gaskets ordered from Ames Performance. 


 


I would like to compensate for the less than mirror finish in the buckets by using a brighter light, but I don't think I want to use LED's Does anyone have any experience with the Sylvania Silver Star incandescent bulbs? Are they significantly brighter than a standard bulb? Do they affect the color of the red lights or give them some crazy color like pink or purple?


 


I have already refurbished the left lens and bucket. Will post more pictures of the completed work.


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Trimbrite makes a chrome tape that would work well.  I used it on my custom rims 15yrs ago and it still looks like I JUSTA put it on.

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1966 & 1967 GTO taillights look cool but fall short on visibility from behind.


I re-did the taillights on the '67 a few years ago just before I sold it.


Once you have it all broken down as you do, you can blast/strip the housings down to factory finish.


At that point I prefer to use high temp flat white within the housing over the Chrome paints. I've tried both and think the white was/is far reflective.


This will gives an excellent reflective value and makes the lights brighter with new bulbs and NO other mods needed.


Polishing the lens' is easily accomplished with any good plastic polish/cleaner kit. Repro gaskets are available from most Pontiac parts suppliers.  


RED.jpg


I've also done this to my '66 Lemans which have worse taillights than the GTO's, they are 1/4 the size with chrome fins over the lens WTH were they thinking ;)


BWRED.jpg


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I completed the refurbishing of my tail lights today. The gaskets I ordered from Ames Performance Engineering worked very well however I was alittle surprised how much I had to stretch them over the lens. It was a good thing I had some spray contact cement otherwise I would never have been able to keep them in place to install the light assemblies back in the car. I used Duplicolor "Chrome" paint on the interior of the light buckets and even though it's not chrome "like", and who is surprised at that, the reflective quality is very good. 


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