Painting the Headlights

[JEden06]

This may be a stupid question but I could've swore I read it somewhere that it was possible with the MKIV Jetta's. Are you able to take the front casing off so that you can paint the inside of it so it's not chrome anymore?

[JEden06]

Re: Painting the Headlights

Also, is there a way to put a fog light in the spot where the fog light is supposed to be or is that a permanent piece?

[Tromping_Maniac]

Re: Painting the Headlights

It is possible to paint the inside of the MKIV headlight. It's called a "Joey Mod" basically you heat up the headlight with a heat gun or oven pop the lens off paint inside reseal the lens and reinstall. Quite simple actually. You can look it up on vwvortex.com forums and they should have a DIY write up with diagrams. Word of warning if you are using an oven, don't let the headlight cook too long or it will melt.

[Flanders]

Re: Painting the Headlights

yeah, I did mine with the oven method

300C for 5 minutes. You really just need to "warm" them up, as the seal around the lense will pry apart pretty easily once it's soft.

I don't think it's possible to put a fog into the blank location though. I wouldn't want to either...that'd be a biatch to cut up nicely.

I did mine GLI-style...just the plastic trim piece along the bottom and side of the headlight, using high temp semi-gloss black paint (to match my black car)

[dubspeedGTi]

Re: Painting the Headlights

I am actualy in the process of doing this right now. I used the oven method to heat mine I had it on 190 deg F and only for 90 seconds. After that is was enough to start them with a flat head screw driver and then once I had a big enough space I could pull the rest apart by hand. I painted everthing on mine though. It looks real nice, I mould definatly recomend the method of using Glad press-n-seal the painters tape will pull off the mirror material. I am not sure about adding the fog light. I actualy have a extra set of OEM headlights with the foog light that a friend gave to me, (they had the mounting brackets broken off and had some eyebrows on them) I took the eyebrows off and put them on my headlights and now I am painting the inside parts then I will take mine off and use the back mounting part and the clear covers with the eyebrows.