How to paint your Headlight bezel and Turn signals Black.

[Matrixloader]

Things you will need.
A can of VHT Nite-Shades
A can of Clear coat (I used rust-oleum Gloss crystal clear)
A can of black paint (I used Krylon Fusion for plastics)
A flat head screw driver
A Philips screw driver
10mm socket with long extension and 3/8 ratchet. (To remove headlights)
2000 girt sand paper
Some RTV silicone sealant (optional) but recommended
Your oven empty and ready to accept your headlights one at a time.

Keep in mind that this project will take up the whole day and you should start this early in the morning if you plan to do this in 1 day

1. You first start by removing the headlights out of your vehicle, on my xd1 I used a 10mm socket with a long extension and a 3/8 ratchet.
2. Remove all bulbs from headlights, high beams, low beams, and turn signals.
3. Next, you want to preheat your oven at around 305-310 degrees Fahrenheit
4. Stick 1 headlight in the oven at a time for around 6-7 min, which should be enough time to melt the glue from the lens.
5. Using a flat head screw driver start on one side by gently lifting up on the clips and separating the glass cover away from the headlight, the entire headlight will be hot so you might want to use some cloth gloves so you don’t get hurt. The glue on the headlight should have been really nice and hot and the glass cover should have separated away without much force.

6. On the XD1 you want to remove the small Phillips screws that are holding down the Bezel and corner covers and then just pop them out of the glass covers.
7. If your glass covers are really yellowish you might want to take this chance to wet sand them down with 2000 girt sand paper and then waxing them afterwards to restore them like new. (Optional) if not skip this step.

8. Using the 2000 girt sand paper lightly wet sand down you headlight bezel to remove any dirt and oil so that the paint will stick to it.
9. In your own work area, start by spraying light cotes of black paint on the Bezel and giving them about a min or two in between cotes to dry and ensure a perfect finish.

Before and After

You can choose to clear coat them after they dry to give them that mirror gloss black finish or leave them as is after they dry. (I did not clear coat mine)

10. Next, make sure you clean your corner light covers very well, or the nite shades paint could crack.
( I wet sanded mine a bit, then dried) spray light coats on the covers and let them dry in between coats for about 2-3 min, then repeat same step until you reach you desired darkness.

11. In this part you need to let the corner covers dry for about 4-6 hrs (I cheated and used a blow hair dryer to speed up the process.
12. After the corner covers have fully dried, wet sand them with 2000 girt sand paper again to make them nice and smooth.
13. Now apply clear coat to the corner covers until you see them become nice and glossy. Then let them dry again and you will have beautiful black turn signal covers.

On XD2 the turn signal covers are yellow, the choices you have here is either take out the yellow covers and just paint the bezel black or lightly sand down the chrome out of the headlight turn signal and paint the inside black or try to nite-shade the yellow covers black. on the 07 Hd elantra you can buy the black headlights or mod them yourself.14.

15. Once you are done painting and everything is dry, start by asembleling everything back togherter except for the bulbs and Stick your head lights back in the oven and heat them up another 6-7 min so that the glue will become soft again.
16. Press hard on the glass covers and headlight assembly so that the lens and headlight will stick together again and leave a good seal. If you want, you can also use some sealant to ensure a water proof seal. I would recomend this. (I did not use it; the lights got rained on all week and have had no water leaks.)






THE FINISHED PRODUCT


Lights off

Park Lights on

Turn Signals on


Other tips: another thing that could be done on the XD1 is leavig the turn signal cover completly out and painting the chrome parts black as seen in this picture. The light would shine alot better but you will also have a small section where the light of the low beam shines trough so you will need to cover that somehow.


OTHER elantras with black headlights

[OPZ]

Now that is a DIY! VERY nice...might have to do this over the summer depending on how the lights look when they are on.

[slow 2K2GT]

please be careful when doing this, I will post up a picture of my dvr headlight later. The damage was from 5 minutes at 150F, short amount of time at a low heat, I guess there was just a weak spot in the plastic.

[Pete03GLS]

damn you... DAMN YOU...! your just making me wanna do more n more to my car... looking at the tuscani silver XD1... i REALLY RREALLY REAAAALY wanna do this...

maybe if i can grow some balls over the summer, to cook my lights, ill do it... if not ill just have to buy a 2nd set n do those. lol

[slow 2K2GT]

Now this is also my 2nd time taking them apart, the first time I did it there were no problems at all. Follow the steps and keep a close eye on them in the oven, you should be good to go.

[Matrixloader]

Its not very hard to do, you just have to be very careful and have "ALOT" of patience,
if your not very good at painting i would buy a second set incase you think you might screw them up.

damn you... DAMN YOU...! your just making me wanna do more n more to my car... looking at the tuscani silver XD1... i REALLY RREALLY REAAAALY wanna do this...

maybe if i can grow some balls over the summer, to cook my lights, ill do it... if not ill just have to buy a 2nd set n do those. lol

if you look close at that pic, you can see that one does not have the clear turn signal cover, they just painted the bezel and also painted the chrome part because you can actually see the light bulb sticking out.

leaving the turn signal cover out and painting the chrome is a better way of getting more light to shine from the turn signal bulb, but again there is a gap where the light of the low beam would shine trough.

[Pete03GLS]

im probably gonna try to find a cheap 2nd set n do those.

[Matrixloader]

im probably gonna try to find a cheap 2nd set n do those.

hey, if your first set come out good, you can alway also do the second set and sell them back on ebay for a lil extra.

[Pete03GLS]

yup good idea.

[Cypher]

I'm moving to the DIY section

[slyderdai]

I gotta tear mine apart to paint the bezels glossy black.Yours look alot better than mine do with the grey bezels. sounds like a good project to tackle tomorrow he he.

[cbogg]

This was a really good DIY for a pretty sweet mod. Nice job! Totally doing this soon, now I just need to find a spare set of headlights.

[Matrixloader]

Just updated on top with pics and a video of the lights with the turn signals and park lights on so you can all see how well the light shines trough.

[Pete03GLS]

very nice, thats the one thing i was interested in seeing. how it actually looks when the lights on.

BUT i have a question... does the heat from the ambers have any effect on the night shade? and do the other bulbs have any effect on the spray paint and clear coat???

[Matrixloader]

none at all, nite-shades is what everyone uses on tail lights to tint them black. so its 100% safe.



I would say just make sure the paint has dried completely and same goes for the other paint before you stick them back on,
other than that i see no harm done.

[Pete03GLS]

sweet. i told my dad about this earlier today, before the updated pictures... n he shook his head, thinking i would just black out the turns so they dont work any more... THEN i showed him the pics, n he seemed to like it. knowing that theyre fully 100% functional.

this will b on my to do list for the summer, along with suspensions, tints, wheels. and who knows what else.

[Matrixloader]

cool man do it, i love the way my headlights look now, even the guys at work say it looks way better and every time i get off the car i have to stop and check them out for a sec. LOL.


also just make sure you use ONLY nite-shades paint on the turn signal covers, not regular paint.

you can buy a can NITE-SHADES on ebay.

[Ugzz]

in another thread like a month ago someone was *****ing about how no one should ever put headlight in the oven for fear of damage and a high powered heat gun around the seal works wonders. No idea if this is verified or what, just re-writing what i read..

[Doohickie]

Good DIY. The only thing is that when I removed the amber lens from my XD2 headlights, I set the oven to 225 and it worked fine. At that temp, you can handle it by hand immediately after taking it out of the oven (just avoid the metal bits; they will feel very hot but they still won't burn you).

[KeWLKaT]

That looks awesome. Thanks for the idea, I am probably going to attempt this since I gave up on the performance aspect.