My 99 GAGT

[[ChaosweaveR]]

Originally Posted by blckgagt

Yup that'd be him. He vanished from there as well. I have his email, which we were talking back and forth with, but haven't had a response from him since November or so.

Wow, screw that dingledouche.

[gudge]

Small update...
Got my personalized plates and tinted covers put on the car


Next up I am doing my headlights, decided to forgo the black clear corners since they are nearly impossible to find and it'll be much cheaper to customize my stock ones. I plan to open up the headlight and paint black the silver parts, besides the back curves where the light has to reflect off. Then get either a silver or black headlight reflector cover or eyebrow. Any suggestions on whether or not I should go with silver or black would be helpful. I am leaning towards silver.

[sleepyalero]

I painted inside mine

[bricooper78]

That's basically all the black/clear corners are, you got a pretty easy project. With a black car, I'd just do the vinyl on the edge over the reflector.

I ended up getting chrome clear corners, and they've grown on me over the years, back then the black/clears were getting real hard to come by, I ordered blacks 3 times and couldn't get them, so got the chromes while they were still available.

[GrandAmMe]

The black headlights with the Amber corners sure do look good on black GA's. I got a light shade of vinyl tint and did the third brake light, Fogs and bumper mounted reverse lights. Really cleaned things up and is removable.
Only issue i've noticed with these headlights is that the rubber gasket doesn't fit perfectly. Btw they are aligned properly.

[gudge]

Well I ordered a silver vinyl headlight eyebrows tonight. Hopefully next week, If i'm not too busy with school, I will be taking the headlights apart and doing the black on the inside. Any suggestions on what paint to use or anything I should do to prep the surface (Light sanding?)?

[bricooper78]

Use high heat, flat or satin, UV resistant paint, that'll give you the most durable finish in there, may be overkill, but I don't like taking things apart and reassembling without doing as much as I can to not have to do it again (I used a Krylon stuff made for outdoor metal furniture on my old truck, worked pretty well so far, only been a few months, but I do miles of gravel, and it's held up real well)

Sanding, as light as that plastic is, use something like maybe 100 grit, doesn't need to be any bigger than that (lower number is bigger grit btw) and make swirls, that way you get alot of criss-cross (jump jump mack daddy make ya jump) for the primer (holy p!ss I have to primer it? Yup.) and then paint to stick down to.
Better prep goes hand in hand with better finished product, be sure and tape off the areas you don't want being painted!!

Good luck!

[gudge]

Yesterday and today I worked on my headlights. They turned out looking pretty good. I'm pleased with them for it only costing around $15. I still haven't put them on the car yet. I am going to leave them open for a few days to let the paint fully dry some more. Here are the pictures of the process and final product.

Well I started off getting them apart which was quite a pain. I tried just heating them to begin with and that got me no where. So then I went to heating and using my xacto knife to cut the seal open.


Next I used scotch brite and some 200 grit on the surface I was preparing to paint. I then cleaned up the headlight and began taping. This was a very time consuming step in order to get it to my liking, but once again my xacto knife came in handy.


I put 2 coats of primer down and let it dry for a few hours before proceeding to my paint.


I put three coats of semi-gloss black paint down and removed the tape after a few hours. Here is the final product



I put the cover on temporarily for these pictures just to see how I like it. I will be posting more pictures of the headlights actually on the car after I seal them back up and when I get the silver reflector cover put on.

[sleepyalero]

Those look awesome. Now tint the amber lense.

[[ChaosweaveR]]

Nice job on the headlights.

[tipnitty]

My bad, wrong thread.

Damn phone.

[AaronGTR]

Yep, good job. That's basically what I did with my projector headlights as well, but I painted black all the way around the outside edge of the reflector as well, and I used matte black paint.

[gudge]

I got my vinyl reflector covers put on tonight. Here are the pictures of the fully completed headlights compared to the non modified stock headlights. I am pleased with the look and am excited to see them on the car.

Stock

Current

[bricooper78]

Noooyiiice wohk mahtie!!!

Well done!

[Shade2012]

Wow, well done man. Looks good. I'd like to see them on the car as well.

[gudge]

I swapped my lower reverse lights and license plate light for LEDs

I've got a problem though. My top reverse lights dont work. The bulbs appear to be good. Also my left side doesnt light up when braking. Any idea what can be causing my taillights to not be working properly?

[TDavis]

What do you mean when you say "bulbs appear to be good." Some bulbs you can't really tell easily from looking at them if they're burnt out or still working or did you get LEDs for your top reverse lights too? Yours brake lights, probably need new bulbs since they're a two filament bulb the second filament that lights up when you apply the brakes it probably out.

[gudge]

I didnt swap them for LEDs yet. What I ment by good was that I looked at the filaments and they all seemed intact. Just seems odd that all the double filaments on just my left side would be out as well. Was thinking theres an electrical problem. Also since both reverse lights were out seemed electrical as well. This week I plan to try some bulb replacing but was just curious if there was anyother ideas for the problem incase its more than just the bulbs which I think it is

[TDavis]

Dunno if its something with Grand Ams because 98 times out of 100 I'll drive up behind a GA and either 1 of the 3 will be present.

1. One of the third brake light bulbs will be out

2. One of the brake light bulbs doesn't brighten and/or its not on at all so only the other "half" of the tail light is lit up.

3. One of the blinker bulbs are out.

Seems like its hard for people to replace their damn bulbs.

[FuriousG]

Originally Posted by gudge

I didnt swap them for LEDs yet. What I ment by good was that I looked at the filaments and they all seemed intact. Just seems odd that all the double filaments on just my left side would be out as well. Was thinking theres an electrical problem. Also since both reverse lights were out seemed electrical as well. This week I plan to try some bulb replacing but was just curious if there was anyother ideas for the problem incase its more than just the bulbs which I think it is

Put the normal bulbs back in your lower reverse lights and see if that fixes the upper ones. Unless your LEDs have resistors it's likely that they are the path of least resistance (draining your current) thereby leaving you too little current in the upper circuit to light the normal bulbs which have a higher resistance. If so, then you'll either have to swap to all LED bulbs for both circuits (and maybe add a resistor to compensate or you might blow fuses) or just add resistance to the lower circuit to cause the current to split more evenly. Might be a trial and error situation until you find what works.

Of course, if you put the normal bulbs back in and it still doesn't work right then you'll need to dig a bit deeper to find the problem...

As for the brake/turn signal problems I don't fully understand what's going on. Can you take a picture for us? Aside from that, I highly suggest reverting everything back to stock and seeing if everything works. Then only change one thing at a time and verify correct operation after every change. That will help you narrow down exactly which piece is causing the malfunctions. When something doesn't work, you'll have an idea of where to start looking.