smoothed rear clusters

[james butler]

i have been dabbling in trying to smooth my rear clusters as they are looking worse for wear these days and i must say WOW what a difference it makes. im gonna have to get some pictures up but im telling you guys it makes one hell of a difference.
step 1- remove cluster from the car.
step 2 grip the rear of the cluster in a vice (Obviously not so tight as to dammage the plastic!!)
step 3 file the ridges off till you are left with the flattend lenses.
step 4 use sandpaper to smooth the plastic preferably wet and dry working up the grades to 1200 grit.
step 5 using tcut scratch remover polish the plastic untill you get a dull sheen.
step 6 use auto glym to get your final shine back into the plastic.

this really does make a difference. my lenses have the ridges crumbling from them, dont know if its impact dammage but they look weathered and horrible so doing this has revitalised them instead of going in the bin and me shelling out £100 a lens from vw.

[Gilb666]

Very interested in seeing pics of this dude, was thinking about doing the same the other day after spending about 4 hours re-striping my lights!

are you tinting them when they're smooth, or leaving them original looking?

[james butler]

im going to give them a light smoke tint and leave it at that. altho i mite dabble in some patterend vinyl over the top to give me some interesting effects.
one step at a time tho.
gotta work out how to get the piccys off my bloody phone first to show you guys.
will do asap tho keep ya posted

[james butler]

here are some pictures of my progress so far.
sorry its taken so long im having trouble logging into the forum atm.
here is the light cluster before sanding.
as you can see the plastic lense is flaking away.

[james butler]

next i sanded the ridges off to get it down to a smooth layer working through the various grades of sand paper to a 800 grit paper

[james butler]

to make the job easier i ditched the files and sanding by hand and bought one of these from machine mart. it only cost £30 and leaves a swirl free finish.

[james butler]

after getting it down to the finest grit the sander come with, i then spent about an hour polishing the plastic by hand using tcuts scratch remover. comes in a toothpaste tube. this gives it a dull sheen. then i used bog standed tcut and then onto the auto glym resin polish.
this was the end result.

[james butler]

come better weather im going to have a go at tinting the lenses. i need to fill in the edges of the lenses too because there are a few cracks then mask the main bulk of the lens and spray the edges matt black to hide the cracks and filler. then blow the whole lot over with some laquer. not sure how well it will stick to plastic though. might get some led bulbs as they are brighter and will show up better through the tint.
to be honest the plastic they make these lenses out of is really tough and thick so dont worry if anyone is going to try what i did, as i dont think you could sand right through the lenses unless you really tried.

[Nate]

just a word of warning, changes to the mot test as of january include the failure item "Products on the lens or light source that obviously reduce the light's intensity or change its colour will become a reason for failure – applies to front/rear position lamps, registration plate lamps, stop lamps, rear fog and direction indicators"

you might want to check with your local tame mot place that what you want to do is acceptable with them ;)