I've recently been laid up off work and I got bored and wanted to spruce up the rover some. I always hear about people cracking open their headlights and adding Halo eyes or even painting them. I hate chrome and figured I'd get rid of the chrome in my headlights and figured I might try it out on the tail lights first before I go and screw up my nice xenon headlights.

Just from looking at the headlights i think that it will actually be easier to crack apart than the taillights just because it looks like its actually SUPPOSED to come apart. I literally CRACKED these taillights open. It left a red line of broken off taillight lens all the way around the housing. I used satin black paint to paint all the unimportant "shiny" parts on my taillights. I used the paint that was made for plastic for the first time rather than using an adhesive promoter and it worked great! 15 minutes tops and it was completely dry to the touch. I'm pretty happy with how they turned out and I'm waiting for the matte black tint film I ordered to finish blacking these lights out. Lemme know if you have any questions on this little project. and I just wanted to show em off! Now on to the headlights!

Also was wanting to see if anyone has done anything similar or even messed around with tearing open either the headlights or taillights.

 

Nice job Grover. However, i'm still struggling with the rationale of making brake/tail lights darker. Creating extreme hazards in heavy downpours or foggy areas. Hmmm...

 

I agree. I want people to be able to see my lights but I love the blacked out look. I've found out that actual tail light tint lets light pass through much more than spray can tint. It's cheaper and I think looks better too. But painting these plastics can definitely create some hazards if I were to paint everything but I think they turned out pretty good and they're still visible even during the day. BUT just in case I just bought all LED light bulbs so those will help. Thanks for the input. Just finished up the headlights and I think they look absolutely awesome!

 

The headlights turned out perfect and were so much easier

 

I gotta say, tail lamps weren't my thing, but that looks pretty cool on the front. I like how it creates black vertical line silhouettes on the front. My concerns would be type of paint used? What did you use by the way for paint? Those suckers get pretty warm up there. I'd definitely be interested in a follow up to this after how the paint adheres and reacts to the conditions of the road. I would do it but I feel like it is either going to slowly burn off or just chip off. I wouldn't mine painting my rims black, I'm with ya on chrome stuff, Black & OD green all the way.

 

Nice look GRover. Have you noticed a difference/decrease in the ambient light that the headlights provided prior to your project?

I too like the black vertical lines that are created at each from corner...extending the black upwards from the bumper. Now you may want to consider one of the blacked out grill options/upgrades that are readily available via ebay.

 

As for black wheels, I can't believe I waited so long to make the change. I see quite a few vehicles with blacked out wheels, but to me, most don't really work due to the color combinations. Since LR is silver, the blacked out wheels really gave him an entirely different look.

 

love this, not the tint but just painting some of that chrome makes a huge diffference

let us know how it holds up and how you make out with the led bulbs since i have yet to find some bright enough, also as we all know messing with the brakelight circuit causes all kinds of stupid issues

 

I taped off everything that I wasn't going to paint and then scuffed up all the shiny plastics that I wanted to be black. I cleaned it up with some prep-all and used the Krylon Satin black fusion paint for plastic. I'll keep y'all updated and let you know if I have any flaking from heat or anything. and the next task will be painting the wheels black. But I still want to get some meaty tires for the rover and I wanna wait to paint the wheels because I feel like a tire machine will pull the paint off at the edges when swapping out rubbers.

 

I was looking at doing the same thing with some LEDs on the headlights, looks cool. and how did you do your wheels? Plastic dip or paint?