What is everyone doing to restore these tail lights where they have faded and look bad? GM doesn't carry them any more and even when they did, you had to buy the complete assembly at $400+. Anyone know of any "how to" write ups on getting the outside lens off? It looks like if you could do that, the lens might be able to be polished out and the black lines could be re-painted.

 

try getting a random orbital buffer, some mild or medium rubbing compound, and polish them. you can probably do it by hand, but thats a pain. i think theres some sort of clear coat on top of the black lines, isnt there? so you could do that without needing new lines

 

me and my friend painted the inside of his headlights which required us taking the lenses apart all we did was bake the headlights in the oven im sure you could do the same with the taillights. when baking the taillights it heats up the silicon allowing you to pull apart. you can watch youtube videos that show you the exact temp and minutes for baking. just make sure you put enought silicon to seal the lights back up so no moisture gets in. Hope that helps

 

The fading looks like it is on the inside of the lens and the black lines appear to be on the inside also.

OK, I'll look.

Thanks for replies, guys.

 

Ther's a write-up on ls1tech about someone repainting the stock grids. A mask was made and black paint was used on the OUTSIDE of the lens, then the whole thing was clearcoated. It's not the way I would want to do it, but options are limited at this point. The results looked good, at least from the pictures they posted.

 

i see, well, sorry about that. i havent worked on TA tail lights before, but ive resurfaced others before since theyre expensive on ebay, but cheap in junk yards

 

I used the 3m head light kit and bought some extra sand paper. all in all, each light took 3 hours, I had to remove the sray on tint which took the most time. they came out crystal clear.

 

You can polish them until you're blue in the face, but it won't solve the delamination issue. Bringing the shine back to the lenses is as easy as hitting them with a buffer; for moderate scratches, wet sanding with 2000 will help. I've restored lights and the center filler panel using this method, and it works great. If you have what appear to be air bubbles under the lenses, your only options are to mask off the grids and paint them onto the outside of the lense, or replace the lights. Brent Franker is the one who sells the masks for the grids.