Rear Reflector refurbish mid year

[rodoredas]

over the past month I have had both the front and rear bumpers off for a basic clean and por15 on the underside of the front skirt and rear end. With the rear bumper off I decided to refurbish the rear reflector and once I had it removed I could see it would rather difficult.

The back was obviously painted with some sort of reflective paint and then coated with a grey sealer, it was peeling in places. This was going to tricky, I could not get clips off, yet I wanted to paint the letters under them, and how would I get some reflective paint under the clips onto the actual reflector.

First job to strip the paint with some diluted plastic friendly paint remover, tooth brush and larger scrubbing brush

it started like this


and after several hours all the old paint was removed, including the black on the letters under each clip.



next was a coat of black gloss hand painted on each letter using a small brush then a small cardboard finger to carefully paint the letters under each clip by applying a drop at a time to the cardboard finger and sliding it under each clip - several hours later....




the obvious problem here was the refecltive paint on the reflector itself, after some deliberation I decided to spray some aluminum foil with reflective paint I had purchased days before (Reflect All by White Khight), and cut it to shape, a single piece the size of the reflector. I then thread the single piece of foil along the refector under each clip.



I gave the edges a coat of black, padded out the spaces between each clip with some felt padding and reassembled the rear end.

It looks a lot better than it did, altough this photo is not so good, I had heaps of fun doing it and learnt some more about my car.



cheers

[Buckterrier]

Very nice job and write-up, subscribed

[Paulporsche]

Nice. Why did you paint the alum foil? Did it actually make it more reflective?

[rodoredas]

yeah i did some tests on some old indicator reflectors i have and the Reflect All just provided an extra reflective effect and I think gave a more consistent finish, and its expensive stuff at $50 a can so I just had to justify buying it!.

cheers

[azasadny]

Wow! Great work there!!!