Reverse light delete/All red lights
 

Have a black car, or other dark color, with painted side markers and/or 3rd brake light? Hate how the white reverse lights break up the rear end?? Well do i have the solution for you!!!! For thirty-six easy payments of $199.95+SH, you too can get rid of the terrible looking reverse lights! Don't have $7,100 to spend on tail lights? No problem!!! Here's how to do it yourself....

All you need is a set of ugly inner tail lights.
7/16" deep socket+ratchet
Small flat head screw driver
Scotch blue regular painters tape wide and thin
Scotch blue fine line painters tap wide and thin
Dupont degreaser or any cleaning agent
VHT translucent red paint, one can is more than enough
Aaaaand last but not least, patience. taping is the most time consuming, yet most important, part of the job.

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Step 1.
Remove plastic covers from tail lights. If you're lucky enough to have a cobalt assembled correctly you will have one if not both covers. When the trunk is opened there is one push tab at the bottom of each cover, push in and pull out and down and it will slide right out.

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Step 2.
Disconnect the electrical socket from the lights. Use the 7/16" socket to undo both nuts from the light. Then using the flat head screw driver push in on the tabs and the light will pop out.

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Step 3.
Clean the whole lens thoroughly with the degreaser then rub dry with a cloth(NOT A PAPER TOWEL).

Step 4.
Using the scotch blue fine painters tape, tape off around the clear part of the lens. When i did this i tried to leave a very, very fine amount, like a fingernails thickness, of red showing so i knew that when i layed down the paint i wouldn't have any clear spots showing.(the picture with the first pass of thin blue makes it look like i left a lot of red showing, thats just the spooty little lens messing with your eyes making you see things. After using the thin tape, switch to the wider tape and then finally the regular scotch blue.

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Step 5.
Once masked off, clean the lens one final time. DO NOT touch the surface after this. After its air dried, lay down your paint. IT DOESN'T TAKE MUCH. I only made 4 passes total. Right to left, left to right, then 90* from those right to left and left to right again. Thats all you need. Any more and it will be too dark and not match the rest of the lens. After a few minutes of drying time unmask the lens and place it to dry.

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Step 6.
Once cured, ~24hrs. Install and enjoy your new matching tail lights that are illegal but look cool as hell. If you're like me and hardly drive your car in the first place let alone at night, you will benefit quite a bit. If you're that guy thats taking his girl "to the park" late at night, just be careful backing up into those out of sight hard to see places.

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:cssNET:

Not bad looks nice I think it would clean up my trunk even more. ;) Thanks for the writeup. BAKED BEANS FOR THE WIN.

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noce write up... i think u and cmiller and a matt m ryan and a few others should all do a drag how to... burn out staging ect....?

Nice write up and looks clean now def worth $7100 imo

thanks guys. Joey i have a little write up in the drag section about the basics, bracket racing, and street tires. but my car is not up to par yet with chris's. still need to get a trans and slicks then 10s will happen. but maybe he can write one on all out driving. ryan can write one about building a car. matt can write one about how many turbos and transmissions he's had. and i'll write one on how to burn out lol.

lol ok... ill join in and write one on how bad it sucks to have a badass setup and not being able to do the simple stuff lol.... im about to take this lysholm kit off and sell it and go turbo again

thats where i'm at. i don't have an adjustable launch control on this tune so i need to wire the wotbox back up. my nittos are shot to shit and feel like a street tire after a burnout, even on 19-20psi i can't go more than 50% in first without spinning. and i'm on a factory open diff 4.05 so no way in hell am i gonna nls it. it will go 11s tomorrow night though, damn sure of it.

get videos for sure... ive been following you int he shadows for a while now lol.... I went to log last night and forgot to tighten the clamp on the lower radiator hose so that got really hot in liek 30 seconds lol... so cant fill a hot block with cold water... throwing a few codes that i cant figure out... one says high idle and oil pressure sensor .... and i cant for the life of me fix my shifter cable to get third to stay in gear... i haven't even made it to the track to experience those problems yet.... and yea nls wont happen not on my tranny unless i find another spare cheap .... my funds finally caught up to me just last month and thats gay

Apparently i dont have a cobalt that was assembled correctly :lol::lol::lol::lol: i dont have the upper carpet or the covers on mine

Interesting, didn't know Nite Shades had red.

neither did i till today lol. and just yesterday i was looking at the rear thinking "man, shit would look mint if i didn't have the white reverse lights". and sure enough when i'm at oreillys today getting some prolong oil treatment i just for shits and giggles wandered around browsing and came across it. thought hell why not!?

not going to lie i like this!

It would be cool if the inner lights then functioned exactly the same as the outer lights.

i might wire it up like that. idk. i hardly drive the thing anyways...

that shit looks pretty bad ass to be honest.

I always wanted to do this if iI had a cobalt lol but with some g5 reverse lights and iit would look sick

Tried this using cream of mushroom soup...turned out terrible. Definitely use chicken noodle, makes a huge difference!

looks great man. I used the same stuff...but somehow it turned out super crappy lol

pics of super crappy?

Hmmm. May try this when I clean up my extra tails... On a side note, does anyone have the part number for the plastic tail covers? Mine are broken and I hate it. :-(

It looks slightly orange

for the truck lid?

Yeah. The tabs on mine are busted and the lights showing like they do doesn't look that nice. :-/

What are you going to do about no reverse lights now?

i have 5% tint. i couldn't see them anyways. and i back the car up once, MAYBE twice a week at night