Tail light project

[Omie01]

This winter I plan to remove my old tail lights and install new ones with refurbished original sockets, NOS seals and original hardware. Does anybody have any words of wisdom before I tackle this project. My fear is that I will find rust/bondo in places I cant repaint.

 

[Stanglover]

This winter I plan to remove my old tail lights and install new ones with refurbished original sockets, NOS seals and original hardware. Does anybody have any words of wisdom before I tackle this project. My fear is that I will find rust/bondo in places I cant repaint.

 My best guess is there will be some rust or pin holes under the rubber gasket. That area was the ONLY spot on my entire car where any rust was found. Hopefully you can touch it up if there is. I opted to replace the panel when the car was stripped for a repaint.

I have posted on this, or at least mentioned it in other peoples posts over the last couple of years. These rear lenses are notorious for leaking although some disagree on where and why they leak.

 Here's what I decided to do and what I'd do different now.

1, seal the metal where the gasket will go with a good rust preventive paint like POR 15 and paint it with whatever your car is, or not.

2, If you're using complete aftermarket housings, which are good, buy all new screws etc. and make sure the gasket is pliable. I bought 1 set that was so hard it was virtually useless, sent them back!

3, Now this is where some will not agree, but on my original lenses, I found the most of the leaking was between the bright work and the plastic. Although there are drain holes, the glue applied to hold the two together was not contiguous so it did not form that all important seal.

4, My suggestion would be to VERY CAREFULLY separate the brightwork from the plastic and I do mean carefully and apply a clear sealant, RTV, around the embossed beads then re-glue the pieces back together. This is a LOT of work I know, but absolutely what I would do next time. I chose another route and that was to apply clear RTV around the edges between the lens segments and the brightwork. Done carefully, it's not noticeable and I have no leaks!!

5, Not something everyone might want to do, but I also used black RTV all around the outside to seal that as well. On my car painted Light Pewter with black-outs, it is not noticeable at all, but is a bit of a problem if and when the lights need to be removed, but I've done it before, just takes more time.

The pictures I've added show the halves together and separated. the red arrow is where the sealant would go. The black arrow is where you would separate the two pieces. These are 73's and the ones that were covered with gold overspray talked about in my post " refurbishing a set of rear lights" The brake fluid trick work very well, no paint, no damage!! I'll continue this in that post later as I'm looking at refinishing the metal with 71 blackout. The picture of the installed rear assembly shows the black RTV all around. I no longer have to worry about bailing water out of the trunk as I've done before

Hope that's of some help,

Geoff.

 

[Carolina_Mountain_Mustangs]

I don't know about words of wisdom but I just did this job a couple months ago on 73 vert. Every car rusted around the tail lights due to the bad design holding water even if just from washing the car. The inside of the tail light panel did not get very good coverage of paint. The flange that holds the two upper and two lower mounting studs kept the spray from getting good coverage so there was raw steel there. There is a spring tab on the tail light studs that holds them studs in place that you can remove them and clean them up.

I did not want to have to drill the spot welds and replace the panel for just a driver quality car so I cleaned the rust off best I could I tried using the Evaporust stuff with no success at all. I would put paper towels on the surface soaked in the stuff and add couple times a day but it did nothing.

So after hours of cleaning I washed with lacquer thinner and applied POR to the rusted areas. I then mixed up epoxy and applied fiber glass mat and epoxy around the entire surface that the gasket sits on inside the trunk. I put masking tape on the outside to prevent the epoxy from running out. I did put several layers on. I sanded the outside areas applied some filler to smooth out.

I also took the tail lights apart blasted the white housing with walnut shells to remove the dried flaky stuff on the inside. I sprayed inside and out with Satin white paint. I ordered a pair of the Carpenter tail light lenses from his eBay store that sells the seconds. The second was that the aluminum trim was not attached to the red lens. This is good if you are doing 71 - 72 you can mask and paint much easier. I also got the Carpenter seals. He changed the design of the seals and did not use the soft spongy material that Ford used. It is much more firm and worked well I thought I had NOS Ford seals but did not use them.

So I also did not want to paint the rear panel so I used some of the flat black peel off paint just to hide the repairs around the tail lights. After done I should have just blacked the entire panel.

I also polished the aluminum trim and painted the black panel between the tail lights. My car has Decor Group.

I also cleaned the trunk floor and drop off and lower quarters and applied the gray POR there also. I have not found a trunk spatter paint any where near what was original so I tossed a trunk mat I had in. Most people do not know what is standard in the trunk any way.

I removed the wire harness cleaned all the grounds and contact areas for the lights and all works fine.

I also removed the quarter panel end caps and put new sealer around the fasteners and cleaned the dirt out. Took bumper off and detailed all the back pieces. This cars had sat for about 25 years. He had a piece of carpet in the trunk with a boom box and they were wet and caused inside of trunk to surface rust. Spent hours rubbing to get most cleaned up. Here are some pics. The pics of the tail light housings are on another camera and cannot find the cable to hook up to download them. If I find I will add later.

A good project to do when not driving will take some time.

https://animoto.com/play/seVNp9v8IGt4ZTOPV7xY2w

 

[tony-muscle]

Last winter I also tackled the job of derusting the trunk and taillight panel. There was some rust where you all describe, by the flange. Some of it looked like someone tried to fix it. There were areas where there was something looking like a thick wire welded around it. I grinded and took off as much rust i could. Then i coated with Rust Bullet and painted black. It looked nice, but only time will tell if it last. I also used some silicone around the gasket, but i used the clear one instead. In some places where the rust was too bad I had to drill small through holes. The Rust Bullet coating was enough to cover these holes with the help of some epoxy. I then touched up the exterior paint.

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