Tail lights

04 May 2017

The tail lights on the 300zx weren’t sitting flush - the bottom protuded a few millimeters. It annoyed me enough and seemed a simple enough fix that I decided to tackle it while the car was waiting for its tires. Long story short, here is the before and after:

I had originally assumed the problem was that the lights just weren’t sitting right. However, once I got them out I found out the problem was that the lens itself was coming off the light. You can see the gap at the bottom of the lights here.

One of the previous owners had done a DIY “JDM” tails (ie replace amber diffuser with one for a florescent light) and didn’t do a great job putting the lgihts back together. Most of the little clips that hold the lens in were broken. The bulb fixtures on the RH side were all melted. It looked like they had used the oven method and perhaps left it in there too long. I wanted to squish the lens best on as best I could, but I wasn’t about to use the oven, after seeing the state of these tails. I ended up finding a pretty good solution: I clipped the lens down against the housing with some strong spring-loaded clamps, then blasting it with a hair dryer until it closed up. This worked surprisingly well and required very little active effort from me: just clamp, put it on the ground, aim the dryer at the light, and wait a few minutes.

It seems to have worked, but I have a feeling it’ll pop back off once it warms up a bit, since all the clips are missing. So I may have some new J-spec tails in my near future. We’ll see.