did nite shade on my tail lights, third brake light and side markers and reverse lights. didnt go extreme except on the side markers. everything loooks good except my tailights, they have a matte finish and its driving me nuts. everything else came out glossy. any ideas to get em glossy so they look factory-ish and any possible reasons why they came out like this. i had prepped all of the parts by cleaning with rubbing alcohol to remove any dirt and wax and any other crap. sprayed them in a make shift paint booth i set up in the garage soi wouldnt get any airborne debris/dust, or other crap to contaminate the paint. it was around 80 degrees when i did this.

 

1. nite shade sucks
2. think you can polish them, but i never did it.

 

Did you clear coat them? Wetsand and compound

 

Wet sand spray again and clear

 

agreed...... they will look like crap in a few months anyways...

 

Mine are 3 years old and still look perfect. But I did use good clear

 

Screw nightshade. Get smoked vinyl overlays for your third brake light and side markers off of houseofgrafx.com or eBay.

 

Vinyl is garbage. I could never get it to fit curves even with a heat gun

 

buy some smoked k2 led tails off ebay. they are light $90 and look 100x better

 

X2 Get an Impala 3rd brake light when your at it so it's also LED.

 

ive got a g5 so i have limited options for tail lghts. i realized where i screwed up. my last coat i passed over too quickly, not leaving an even coat. wetsanding, final spray and duplicolor clear to finish, sometime in the next week

 

How some people can make their nite shades looking so great of it's not good and why it sucks ?

 

Best thing you can do is using a rubbing compound. I've tried multiple compounds and nothing works better than meguairs diamond cut compound. It's expensive but you can use it for multiple things. You can either hand polish them or put it on a buffer and do it. Once that's done and your lense is where you want it to be, put 2 coats of wax on it and it'll be perfect. Clear coat is useless in a can. Don't bother with it.

 

So if you're doing this you can have something that looks good and is steel beautifull after couple months?!

 

Mine look perfect since I've done them.

 

Let's see some pics, and pics of your light output

 

Mine?

 

Anybody, the light output with vht is horrible, unless your just doing like 1 coat.

 

Haha. Give me a couple mins and I'll post some pics. I'm gonna take some pictures now...

 

So we'll see if it's perfect

 

heres mine with vht, looked good. but im still against vht haha. get the professionally done, everything about it is better.

 

I see what you mean...

 

Mine aren't completely black like yours. Mine are more of a deep cherry red. The blacked out is horrible for visibility, no wonder why you'e against it...

Anyway, here's mine... ya it's dirty and horrible cell pictures.
Close up without lights on

With parking lights on


All lights off

With parking lights on

Brakes

 

Looking good imo

 

Thanks. There's a fine line between black and tinted. You just gotta know where to draw the line though. People like the blacked out look, but it isn't my thing. The shade I did fits the car perfect. The only bad part about tinting lights the way I do it, is that a coat will rub off. say if you want the look of only 2 coats like mine, you end up spraying three and 1 coat will eventually buff off. The only reason why is because there isn't any clear for the compound to cut into. It might sound weird on how I do it compared to others, but all my buddies let me do their's and absolutely love the look of them.