Watch These Car Repair Wizards Perfectly Restore a Cracked Taillight
Cracked your 20-year-old Civic’s taillight? All you need is another piece of taillight, heat, several hours, and a lot of skill.
When confronted with a broken taillamp, most of us would either look to replace it... or throw some red tape on there and hope the police don't notice. Turns out, there's a third, much more labor-intensive way to go about things.
Found on a Facebook page called Mechanic Steve, there's a shop in China that appears to specialize in taillight repair. In the hands of these mechanics, a dirty and cracked taillight bar can be restored to like-new (if not better-than-new) condition. Watch how it's done:
Using a ground-up piece of another taillight melted down to a liquid, the taillamp repairman takes the washed taillight cover and pours in transparent red plastic where it's missing before taking off the mold, and sanding and polishing the area so it blends in. Next, what I'm assuming is some sort of clear coat is applied before another round of polishing is done. The result is a taillight bar that looks absolutely brand new.
In a separate video, the amber turn signal section of what looks like an old Lincoln is restored with the same level of care and craftsmanship. The chrome Lincoln logo that has rubbed off over the years is repainted on, an entirely new clear cover is fabricated and polished to a glossy shine.
For the majority of people and their cars, is this sort of process really worth it over simply replacing the broken light with a new one (or, for older cars, finding and cleaning up an intact one from a junkyard)? Maybe, maybe not. But for those with cars for which taillight parts are in short supply for whatever reason, it's nice to know that solutions are out there even if it means shipping your stuff to the other side of the earth to get it done.
For everybody else, though, the fact that there are people doing this and getting to see it is mighty interesting in and of itself.
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