How To 'Slightly Tint' MK3 Headlamps!!

I got borrrred lastnight so at about 10pm i decided i would do this!!


First of all take your headlamps off the car...bit obvious really!!



Next up carefully remove all bulbs and wiring etc, before doing all of this bang the oven on at about 200 degrees






Next place the headlamps glass down in the oven for about 5-6 minutes...check inbetween though!!

After remove using some oven gloves or man up like i had to and use a thin tea towel and play hot potato with them!!

Hold them by the plastic and the glass should slip off leaving you like this...





If you work quick use a chisel or some scraping device to get rid of the old sealant whilst warm as it works a lot easier...



Forgot to take a picture but basically next i cleaned the insides of the glass with a solvent from work....then used a very low tack tape and masked up in insides of the reflective area...LOW tack tape only as i was using that and managed to peel off a small amount of the reflective coating so anything else is a no no!!

Gave the aras i was painting a quick scotch (use fine sand paper also...this is used to give the area a key so the paint will stick) and wiped them with solvents..

Next up two light coats of satin black giving 10 mins between the coats...

Then after that is dry carefully de-mask them and put back together...bathroom sealant will do...failing that some clear sealant nabbed from work will suffice!!

The reason i did them so late aswell was so the sealant had a fair few hours to go off overnight...


And here are the results....





This method was also used on my front indicators...


Jay

Not bad!

Wanted to do this to my mk4 headlights, although heard horror stories of the glass cracking when taking them off the backs.
Kinda made me re-think about doing it...

Hmmm, might have to give it a go sometime!

Shouldn't be too hard on a mk4 dude,,,same principals i pressume..


just got to be ohhhhhhhh so careful!!

can i use duck tape??! lol. looks good Jay!

Yeah i believe you can use superglue also on skodas....but quack tape would be fine...

well i always keep some in the boot just because they fall apart all the time, bit like your mirrors eh!

mk3golfcab wrote:

well i always keep some in the boot just because they fall apart all the time, bit like your mirrors eh!

Harsh....but fair!!

good work fella, whats that skull thing you have going on with the bonnet..???

The skull was a boredom/mate mocking the patchy spray job on the bonnet...so i did the quick thinking..."Well how about a bloody skull then!!"

just playing for now...will get more serious this year with it!

right then Jay, best you get round here and do the ones on my VR then.

P.S. my fronts have been off before.

i think im gonna order some lamin-x light smoke film for my headlights

MarkGTX wrote:

i think im gonna order some lamin-x light smoke film for my headlights

+1 but no i'll make a hash job of doing them.

i think it would be quite hard to mess it up. the stuff seems to be really good. almost self healing. and if you heat it it bends round corners really well.

and as far as i could make out on the website it lets enough light through to pass an mot.

might have to do that to my angel eyes see how it comes out

itll be easy on you headlights mark, not that many contors. my rear lights was fine apart from 1 area right on the corner, and dont over heat it or the glue bubbles up and looks gash

should be even easier on mine then, total flatness!

Stampers wrote:

Not bad!

Wanted to do this to my mk4 headlights, although heard horror stories of the glass cracking when taking them off the backs.
Kinda made me re-think about doing it...

Hmmm, might have to give it a go sometime!

+1 dude i tried mine but no luck the glue is fecking strong.

Jay wrote:

Yeah i believe you can use superglue also on skodas....but quack tape would be fine...

work on angel eyes??

BenjaminHeavey wrote:

work on angel eyes??

if they are Angel eyes you just take a hammer to them! and job done!

I did this when i made a set of cupra caddyvan headlights.

I heated 2 sets up so i could use Seat cordoba cupra twin lights with standard vw caddyvan glass from another set(Seat cars had different glass)

200d for about 10/15mins

I satin blacked the outer edge of the cupra internals before sealing the glass back on.

Cupra lights. The glass was already broke



Caddyvan lights.



Lights together(not tinted or sealed)



Tinted

which part do you pray on the mk3 lights

u say 200 degrees, is that 200f or 200c ? do u no wot gas mark that is 2 ?
also is that turning once or occasionally ?