White Housed Headlights

There was no way that I was going to go and put black housed headlights and signals on my car. It's way to overdone. So I decided that I would go White 1987-88 HN512 Polar White to be exact.

First thing was to remove the headlight from the mounting bracket.


After a few dark-n dirties, a long soak in penetrating oil and a bit of muscle. They finally came apart


Most headlight DIYs don't mention to remove the mounting bracket. I wanted to because some of the hardware looked rather rough.


This is what both of the main adjusting mounts looked like. Part numbers added to the always growing "Parts Required List".

After washing the years of dirt and grime from the Headlight it was time to bake them in the oven at 230F for 5 minutes and separate the lenses from the housings.


Then it was time to carefully mask off the portion of the original reflector that I wanted to remain. Then sand and prep the unmasked portion of the housing for primer and paint.

Hanging from the painting line I have strung across the ceiling of my garage. Sanded and ready to go.


Gave the garage a good dusting and turned the heat up a little bit and threw a couple coats of primer on.


Then gave them an adequate dosage of Polar White. 12hrs of dry/bake time and I unmasked them to reveal my new white housing headlight.


The taping, prep and painting was the easy part of this project. Getting the lenses from a state like this,


To the end product was the tough part. They were in such bad shape it took more than a few hours of wet sanding and polishing. Just to get one too look like this.


Started with a bucket of warm soapy water and 400 grit wet dry, then onto a 1000 grit, 2000 grit, then it was the white buffing paste and loose cotton buffing wheel. To finish it off I used Mother's Gold three stage wax system. It was a hand application of step 1 cleaner, Step 2 sealer conditioner and then step 3 carnauba wax.

I had to get another headlight from the junkyard, because one of mine had a little bit of weld spatter/ a hole in it. That one is still in the wet sand stages. $30 lesson learned, no welding while the plastics are still on the car...lol

Update!

Finally got around to finishing my headlights tonight.

Testors 1257 Transparent Blue day/high lights.

After two coats of paint, 48 hr cure time, good cleaning, few minutes bake time in the oven and this is what you get.

The white housed corner lights are still on hold until I get a new set.......