Tail Light Bezel Removal

[bcomo]

I've been wanting to remove the tail light assemby so that I can clean up the chrome bezel and repaint the black squares.

Besides removing the rear trunk board, is there any major difficulty that I might have to disassemble and get the bezel out? The bumper bullet looks like it overlaps the bezel.

[Guest]

tail light bezel

The hardest part of the job is getting to the nuts that hold the tail light assemblies in. The access through the holes in the body provided is maddening. Some nuts are accessible easily with a nutdriver, about 1/2 are ridiculously challenging. Do yourself a favor, put a couple of layers of masking tape on the body access hole and avoid shaving the skin off your hands trying to get to some of the nuts. Replace your lamps- you'll never want to get to them again! Watch for good grounds too for the lamps otherwise some may become dimmer. Also be aware that there are some foam sealing gaskets to try to keep intact. LEON

[bcomo]

Thanks for the advice Leon.

As usual, this is not going to be a simple remove and replace deal.

[fomoco59]

fyi... John Draxler at www.TbirdRanch.com has vinyl pre-cut appliques for the 60 tailight bezels. I used them once, and they are a little tedious to apply, but look pretty nice when done. Mine were REALLY pitted badly.

[bcomo]

Mike:

You did a great job -- that's a bunch of little squares to apply. I'll check it out with John.

Your tail light trim rings are really nice. I use the cotton stuff in a can for the chrome, but was wondering if there's anything new out there.

[fomoco59]

I powdercoated mine with Eastwood's "Almost Chrome" powder after sandblasting them. Like I said, they were really rough. Looked ok for a driver car. Lots of pits still evident. The little squares are time consuming to put on, but my wife and I both had a pair of tweezers and a bottle of wine to get thru it...started to get a little sloppy toward the end !

[Guest]

Bart be careful when you remove the screws that hold the buckets in.I stripped out a few of them and ended up having to cut the heads off.Time consuming and aggravating to say the least.

[Guest]

Also the way I did the squares was to tape the chrome edges then we spray painted the whole thing and when dry went back and sanded the raised areas.Only took a six pack or so,if I remember correctly

[bcomo]

George:
Thanks for those tips. Every little bit helps.

Mike:
I can't get over how great those trim rings/buckets look.

I went to Eastwoods site. Is it the Hot Coat system that you have? I guess to do that, you need a dedicated oven to bake it, and a sand blaster. I don't have either one.

[fomoco59]

Yes, I have the Hot Coat system set up in my garage shop with a used electric oven. I sold my giant 4' sandblaster because it took up so much room, but I'm considering getting a benchtop. I do a lot of headers (hi-temp), intakes and small pieces for everyone but ME! There's not one PC'd part on my TBird yet, altho I'm going to do the valve covers this Spring in Ford Blue as my paint is chipped. I did my old '60 covers in yellow. Here's a pic of the basic colors showing the blue and yellow. Also, the "Almost Chrome" is just below the blue and hi-temp silver just above the blue. Eastwood has a lot of cool custom colors as well. http://www.eastwoodco.com/jump.jsp?i...ORY&itemID=458

[Guest]

Tail lights

I did not think the bezel plates were hard to remove. I used a 6 inch socket extension. To repaint the place squares, use a Sharpie paint pen in medium black. It is just like a marking pen, but contains paint. You can do the whole plate in a about a half hour, faster if you were good at coloring in school.

[bcomo]

Where did you get the Sharpie paint pen?

I've never seen one before. That would be great for touch up later on too.

[Guest]

Try markingpendepot.com
Also comes in fine point.

[bcomo]

Thanks jalderfer. I'll look there.

[byersmtrco]

A buddy of mine does powder coat @ home. Motorcycle parts mostly. Good stuff.

My T/L bezels are bad too. The black is almost gone. I've fooled around with T/L wiring and those sockets(junk junk junk, what was Ford thinking??!!) P-I-T-A !!!!!!!!!!!!
Not something I want to fool with again. All those lights are working right now, just need to fix the lic/plate lights.

I've though about just touchup paint. The chrome itself is pretty good. That would be a long project.