Monday, September 11, 2006 - 09:11 am, by: Altaaf Sharif(Sharif_dee801)
Man Melbourne haha !!
This is very frustrating I have taken the headlights to about 3 Auto electricians and 3 Smash repairs/body works places and everybody said buy new ones.
Thats BS I need these lights cleaned !!
Id be interested if S&LC are reasonably priced, cause then you would have to factor in freight both ways for those big headlights.
Worst comes to worst I will do it myself cause I cannot drive this car without getting pulled over, as its so foggy.
Im keen if someone could tell me approx how long to put them into the oven and at what temperature it would help immnesely.
Monday, September 11, 2006 - 09:20 am, by: Justin Cook(Justin)
Mate my Dad is a courier. If they are reasonably priced, we can send ours together. Just drop them over and I will post with mine. Will cost $20 for the 4 only. So it will just be clean and postage back.
Monday, September 11, 2006 - 09:29 am, by: Adam Lonergan(Alchemistal)
I spoke with them last month about it and all I was told is that they are reasonable as one of the guy's sons does it in his spare time. I saw a few re-sealed ones on the shelf so maybe they would be interested in doing an exchange service.
Monday, September 11, 2006 - 09:51 am, by: Altaaf Sharif(Sharif_dee801)
See I want mine with the orange indicator cap removed for that nice sleek finish then just use those new Phillips silver bulbs that flash orange.
I wonder if they remove them and do that on the exchange ?
Thanks for the Offer Justin, might have some better news, the previous owner of my car always had everything done by a workshop in Birkdale (not sure of the name) and he quoted him approx $60 to clean out each headlight.
I think thats a good price and I will chase him up to get the name and contact details of the guy, will keep you guys posted
Monday, September 11, 2006 - 01:28 pm, by: Altaaf Sharif(Sharif_dee801)
Ok I have started to do this myself this morning. Got headlights off in about 10 mins for both sides piss easy.
REALLY BAD NEWS
After I did the oven bit and pryed em apart it was all good.
I went down to my local Mitre 10 to get something that would help remove all that goo.
The salesman there advised me to use Acetone, I explicitly checked with him if it would be safe to use on plastic, he said it would be fine.
Then I get home and start applying it to the goo, does not work at all, useless stuff then I notice it drip down on my headlight lens and its melting away my plastic.
I quickly wipe it up using a cloth and it has left a massive stain on the lens it has discoloured and affected the texture of the plastic and will not come out using water, turps or anything.
Its permanently messed the plastic, now I been quoted $110 to buff the whole thing down and polish it up to get it looking like new.
Now this is where I went back to Mitre 10 furious, the guy was apologising so much that he did a mistake and that acetone is corrosive to plastic.
Spoke to manager too, he wasn't willing to budge and offer some compensation for it, now I have put in a complaint to Mitre 10 head office which it is now being investigated.
Im so demoralised now, I was looking forward to driving my car on the weekend now I cant till the lights are fixed and back in.
Just so unhappy right now last time I ever do anything myself.
Monday, September 11, 2006 - 02:17 pm, by: Benjamin Burgess(Jampac)
Why did you try to remove the goo? You use oven to pry headlight open, it cools down and hardens again, then once you got the plastic lens all clear using 2000 wet/dry sand paper and a cut of polish you stick it in the oven again and get it soft and put it back together again. No acetone, or any crap like that required.
The last owner of my soarer tried to do this and put this in the lights that was so hard to get off, even oven didn't soften it. Even put silicon sealer on one of the lights. I spent atleast 10 hours fixing up the lights after all that.
/me throws hands up in the air and screams "WHYYYYYY..."
Also the time to remove the lights depends on who in japan or australia removed the lights before you as I found on my one the previous owner/owners hadn't put in the really hard screws that you need to remove the inner wheel guard to get to, so yeah it took 5 minutes.
Monday, September 11, 2006 - 03:22 pm, by: Benjamin Burgess(Jampac)
My ones have been using the same out of the factory for 15 years, with a clean up about a 20 months ago using same goo, just removed all the other the previous owner put on extra as he didn't know about the oven trick, and I've got none of that condensation crap you see on lots of soarers after 20 months.
So all I did was heat up, split apart, sand inside and out, polish, buff, heat up and stick back together again. Add extra step for removing all the previous owners screw ups.
Its quiet an easy job when you have a standard headlight.
Monday, September 11, 2006 - 07:27 pm, by: Vinh Bui(Hyudsjk)
Altaaf: like Benjamin said, I've never had any fogging up of my headlights for 15 months now using the standard goo. If you do it right, you won't experience any problems at all. I kept taking the headlight out of the oven at intervals and tried to pry it open. This took me a bit longer to finish the job, but I just wanted to make sure none of the plastic was gonna melt.