How to Smooth and Polish the Center Taillight Unit

[phantomzer0]

Disclaimer: I don’t take any responsibility for any harm or damage you may cause to your vehicle or vehicle parts. Proceed upon your own discretion!!!!!





Materials Needed in Order of Use:
Rubbing Alchohol / Nail Polish Remover [[* Only if you need to remove anything RED]]
Paper Towels
Couple Bottles of Water
600 Grit Sandpaper
1000 Grit Sandpaper
1500 Grit Sandpaper
2000 Grit Sandpaper
Meguire’s PlastiX [[or any plastic polish by a major brand name]]
Microfiber Towel
Microfiber Applicator Pad
Buffer [[* Not needed to complete but will give even better results!]]
Some Patience and Confidence

Filler Plate Removal
Pop your hatch and remove anything blocking you from pulling back the carpeting covering up the back of the taillights. Here’s a picture of what you will be removing:






Pull the material away from the car, like so:






You’ll need to remove 5 black screw caps from each taillight. They look like this:






After you get both taillights off, you’ll be able to pull the middle piece off. There is nothing attaching it to the car, so give a playful tug to get it off.





Paint Removal
Grab your bottle of Alcohol and saturate some paper towels with it. You’ll only need to do this if you have any red ink on your piece. If you don’t have much fading, get ready for a fight. Those of you that have most of it faded, this part should be relatively quick to complete. Keep rubbing and rubbing until you get ALL of the red off. Sanding will not remove it, so take your time and get it all off.






Don’t be decieved by the newfound color the alcohol may induce. Once it dries up, the image will fade again. Keep at it and get it as clean as you can. You’ll notice that you won’t be able to get rid of the outline of the image. That’s what we are going to use the sandpaper for.






Once you get your piece to look like the one above, you’ll need to bust out your bottles of water and the 600 Grit Sandpaper. Rip off a small section suitable for two fingers to use. You can see in the picture how little of a piece I used. The bigger the piece, the more uneven the sanding will be.






Dump some water onto the piece and then lay the piece of sandpaper on it. Dump more water on making sure to get the sandpaper nice and wet. Begin by moving left and right on the piece, making sure to keep adding water as your sandpaper beings to move slower. You want to keep the paper moving smoothly. The water will act as a buffer between the piece and the sandpaper, making a nice sliding effect.


DO NOT APPLY EXTREME PRESSURE!!!



You barely have to apply any pressure onto the sandpaper. Hold it on and let it work it’s magic. Keep at it until you feel everything is fairly smooth. You’ll feel how rough it is especially when you get to where the images used to be. Once you feel like everything is smooth, pour more water onto the piece, washing away all the contaminants.


Here’s what mine looked like after the 600 Grit stage:






You may notice some outlines still remaining. The next two stages may get rid of them completely, but if they don’t, be sure to go back and do another pass with the 600 grit.


Grab your piece of 1000 Grit sandpaper and emulate the process above. Keep the paper and unit wet and move in left to right motions. Keep going until you feel that everything is relatively smooth. Wash all the contaminents off for the next stage.


Grab the 1500 Grit sandpaper. Your going to do the same process once again. Make sure you keep everything wet and smooth. Once you feel like everything is smooth again, move onto the last sanding step. Here’s a picture of the 1000 and 1500 stage.





***I had to go back at this point and hit the unit with 600 again. I had some outlines remaining and I did not feel that the 2000 grit would remove them. If you’ve gotten all the outlines off, proceed ahead, otherwise go back and start at the 600 grit step again. ***



Once your sure that the lines are off, grab the 2000 grit sandpaper for the final sanding step. Follow the process your now familiar with making sure to keep everything wet. Once everything is smooth, wash away all the contaminants and dry it off with your paper towels. Here’s what mine looked like after the 2000 grit step.





Polishing
Now we will make it look shiny and new! I used Meguire’s PlastiX:






Using your Microfiber applicator pad [or buffer if you have it], apply a generous amount of the PlastiX to the pad. Begin by applying the polish in a circular motion, similar to a buffer. Your hand will begin to slow after you spin it for a while. Once you feel that you can’t spin the polish, grab your towel and buff the cream off.









Continue on until you’ve completed the entire unit. I did not use a buffer and I got pretty damn good results. If you do use a buffer, expect an even more kick ass finish. I’ll eventually go back and hit it a few times with a buffer. Here’s a picture of what it looked like before I finalized the polishing. You will notice some areas with scratches still, so go back and hit ‘em again with the polish. Do this until your satisfied.

[Fixxer99TA]

Nice writeup! I think I am going to do this simply because mine could use a refreshing

[SoulReaver]

It's a night and day difference when it's done man. I suggest it!!

[Spudnick]

Definitely a good mod. Although my car only had stickers on it, it looks 100% cleaner with them off.

[zooguy]

i was wanting to know could / would you use this same process on the tail light lenses themselves?

[wysemunky]

I would assume so. If they aren't too bad scratched up or delaminating then they might clean up with just a good buff.