Materials Needed:
Headlight
Oven or Heat Gun
Flathead Screwdriver
Phillips Screwdriver
Fine Grit Sandpaper
High Heat Spraypaint (For Plastics)
Step 1:
Remove headlight from vehicle.
Step 2:
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. While its heating up, there are two screws on the back of the headlight near where the turn signal is. Use the Phillips screwdriver to remove them. Then put your headlight on a pan and stick it in. After 2 minutes, turn off the oven and let the headlight sit inside for another 5 minutes. Then pull it out. WARNING: The headlight will be hot, so either wear gloves or make sure your hands can handle the heat. Start working away at the little tabs along the length of the headlight, and use a flathead screwdriver to pry apart the headlight at the seams. Use the screwdriver to "cut" through the silicon glue. Once you have one corner mostly apart, you can just grab both halves and start pulling them apart and it should be fairly easy to separate them at this point. Make sure to do this part fast, because the glue hardens quickly.
You can also do this step with a heat gun instead of an oven (I recommend this method because there is less chance of damaging the headlight). Instead of heating the entire headlight, you can just aim the heatgun at the seams and once it heats up, start at it with the flathead.
Once you have the two halves separated, the housing will be attached to the lens by a small screw and 2 tabs. Take out the screw and release the tabs, and you can remove the housing. This is what you will have:
Step 3:
Remove the side marker (you can replace it later on if you like, but I decided to remove it permanently.) You can just pull on it and it should come off. If it doesn't, then just release the two small tabs that its held on by.
Step 4:
Remove the amber housing for the turn signal. This was a real pain in the ass. The two tabs that its held in by are really tough to remove. I had to use a small flathead to pry on the side of the amber housing until it finally came free. Some force was involved, but you have to be careful not to break it because this part has to be put back on at the end.
Step 5:
Take your housing and using the fine grit sandpaper (about $2 for 5 sheets at any hardware store), sand away as much of the chrome as possible. The fine grit will keep the smoothness of the housing, but it will haze away the chrome.
You will end up with something like this:
Step 6:
Take the housing out to a well ventilated area with your paint and spray on multiple light coats (with about 10 minutes in between each) onto the housing. Then let dry.
Step 7:
Put everything back together, and stick it in the oven/hit it with the heat gun again to make the silicon gooey again ,and then put a lot of pressure on it for about 10 minutes or so until the glue hardens to keep from having moisture leak. You'll end up with this:
Gen 5 Painting Headlight Housing DIY w/ Pics!
. With a heatgun, you don't run as much risk because you can aim it directly at the seams isntead of heating the entire lamp.
Linear Mode
