I’m looking for technical help or recommendations on:
I need to remove the upper/middle/high-level/third brake light from the rear so I can respray it in warm, dry conditions.
Based on what others have written, there’s a high likelihood of damaging the foam seals when I take it off. I can’t find replacement seals to buy anywhere, so I will need to have suitable materials ready to make some new ones to fit.
Anyone here had experience of doing this and can advise what I should be looking for? Thickness, width, material…
I’d prefer not to use silicone sealant or anything else that might make it more difficult to remove the light again in the future.
Could you not try and salvage the original as intact as possible and template it on to suitable foam and make your own? I’ve done this before for the rear lights on another car.
That’s the plan, yes. I’d ideally like to have the foam ‘ready to go’ so that the light is off the car for the minimum amount of time. So I’m hoping that someone else has already solved this problem and knows what materials I will need.
Update on this:
The foam sealing ‘washer’ around the wiring hole seems to have had adhesive on both sides, so it tore into two pieces when I removed the lights.
The light is held in place with 4 expanding trim clips, each of which has a thin (<1mm) foam seal to keep the water out. These appeared to have permanently compressed and were mis-shaped.
My solution was to replace all of these seals with some new ones cut from closed-cell neoprene foam sheet about 2mm thick, and with adhesive on one side. So far, seems to be waterproof - neither pouring water from a large jug nor last night’s rain have resulted in any water dripping through. I’ll withhold final judgement until I’ve driven it through the rain for a bit.
Also, a top tip on removing the lamp unit: tape a 7mm socket onto an extension bar, and push up on the clips through the holes from below. This releases the clips and it’s easy to lift off the lamp; literally takes less than a minute once you’ve found the clip locations.
Long shot, but how did the foam cutouts hold up for you? I just got my car resprayed and am reluctant to use RTV on new paint. Hoping to cutout some single side adhesive foam to cover it. Did you stick the adhesive side to the brake light or to the body?
Sweet, did you push the adhesive side onto the car or brake light side. I would assume directly onto the brake light clips since thats how it likely came?
