Headlight coating repair

[snrusnak]

I decided to make my own thread on this and stop stealing others. This hopefully will be a fairly good cheap fix. It was $7 at advanced discount. Says it's a reflective coating, and says it's heat resistant. Better than anything else I can find in a rattle can. I will post procedure on how I prep and spray this weekend, then will follow up with durability later on.

 

[Reamer]

I used this too, and if you don't prep the surface real well it will flake off.
Good luck.

 

[snrusnak]

Ok what exactly do you mean? I've painted things before and never had an issue, but I prep well. Did you do any prep at all? Was it reflective enough?

Maybe priming it first would be beneficial...

 

[Reamer]

I did my upper Triple tree, And on the top coat I used orange on top of the silver you used.
I let it all dry for 2 days and when I was re assembling everything it started coming off and had to re do it, but I used sandpaper and roughed up the surface and it seems ok now. Lot of work re doing it all.

 

[Reamer]

Oh, and it may not be reflective enough for your usage.
What about chrome paint instead?
Another thought would be to go to home depot and get the aluminum AC tape for vents. It is made from real aluminum and is real sticky and you can trim to your needs. If it has printing on it, just use some finger nail polish to remove it and will be GTG.[up]

 

[snrusnak]

Sounds like you didn't prep it the first time.

As far as tape, it would be near impossible to get it to fit the headlight buckets properly, and IMO is pretty ghetto, so I'm giving this a shot. I was going to do chrome paint but they never spray chrome, just silver. This is at least heat resistant and says reflective so I thought it was worth a shot. I'll post results, I will be spraying it this weekend. I'm not worried about adhesion, that's all based on prep. I've never had an adhesion issue, even with rattle can.

 

[Reamer]

[up]

 

[BuellyBagger]

in my prfessional refinish opinion.... eh its worth a shot

I'm gonna go ahead and say it probably wont last long since most of the duplicolor line is laquer so it will most likely get soft when it gets hot and yellow or even burn, but like i said its worth a shot, just be sure not to burn ur bike down

 

[snrusnak]

I was going to do that other paint that costs over $60 for like 1/2 pint but I wasn't sure it'd work and don't have spray equipment available right now. For now, and for $7 or whatever it was this will hopefully work. It says heat resistant, whatever that may mean who knows, but it can't be worse than what was oem.

 

[GAXB9R]

The light housing in my hand is the painted version. Cant give you longevity results, but this can give you an idea of brightness.

I positioned the light housings beam in my hand over the mounted one. Its brighter than before, but not brighter than the 05 housing assembly i got off evilbay.

Definetly a good quick fix if your short on cash.

 

[snrusnak]

Thanks for posting. The light output looks good. This should work out for me at least for now, my lights were so bad you couldn't even tell if they were on.

 

[snrusnak]

Well I sanded the light housings today and found that the low beam the plastic had actually softened and melted and deformed. But it is barely out of shape so I just sanded it best I could then sprayed them. I was trying to rush and got a run so had to wait most of the day for it to dry, sanded the run down, then respray. I will sand again and spray one more coat to fill in completely where I sanded the run tomorrow evening then they will be done. This paint seems pretty good, and as long as it truly is heat resistant I think this will be a good fix(for $7).

 

[thrstrmech]

my evilbay lights seem to be holding up really well for $60...should have taken a pic of the inside when I removed one of the spoons, it has a very nice, smooth chrome finish, replaced the white bulbs and installed blue ones with the same rated power and they are even brighter

 

[snrusnak]

The problem I have with buying new(or new used) ones is that the updated version had the same problem and will eventually end up the same way. I'm pretty sure this is going to hold up. If it wasn't heat resistant then they wouldn't say it was, you know.

 

[snrusnak]

I know some people do the mod where they add a spoon to the high beam and run with two low beams at all times. Does anyone remove the spoon from the high beam and run with 1 high beam all the time, and a second when the high beam switch is engaged? Would this be too blinding to others you think?

 

[FlaXB9R]

Before I switched head light assemblies my low hardly ever worked so I always rode with just the one high. Don't do to much night riding but didn't seems to be too bright. 10x's brighter than your lights were but not overwhelming.

I honestly don't think it would be a problem although I'm running two spoons.

 

[snrusnak]

I think I'm going to leave the spoon out and ride like that, I could always put it back in if it poses a problem. I'd rather be seen than not seen.

 

[thrstrmech]

I'm running with one high and one low, both lights came with spoons, if someone is bothered with the high beam, they simply move over a lane...only high beam on when switched to high

 

[snrusnak]

thrstrmech, so you have one low and one high on at all times?

 

[thrstrmech]

no, only one light on at a time, the dual head light mod simply doesn't work on my bike, tried it before doing the conversion and after with the same result, the low beam cuts off, when it's put back together the original way, it works flawlessly...so my S to R conversion is a "one eye"