Has anyone AE'd their 02 tail lights?
 

I was wondering what it would look like if you painted the silver part of an 02 tail light. (If you can't immagine what I'm describing, think of the part you would paint on an 02 headlight, now just do the same for the tail light)

If anyone has done it and has pictures that'd be cool. :wiggle:

you cant take the tailights apart..
you can just "AE" them by buyin the SE tailights

:werd: ...................................

Well I knew that, but I didn't know you couldn't take them apart.

dremel, take pics and do a write-up. be the first.

what i did on my 2k2 to eliminate those hideous tail lights was to get a set of the 2k-2k1 GXE/GLE(SE will work also) Taillight and then made cutouts of how big i wanted the circles to be and had them painted the same color as my car. Cost 150 total for the paint and lights and made the car stand out and look much better then those things they come with.
:woot:

that sounds awesome. do you have pics? and do they chip?

dmbmaxima2k2--
please post some pics. I may be doing the same.

I just swapped someone my 02 tails for his 01 AE/SE tails... fastest AEing you can do... but I'd be interested to see how yours turn out...

I'll probably regret asking but what exactly is AE'ing tailights?

Having your taillights be all black.

http://www.cardomain.com/memberpage/428172/5 Pics at bottom of page.

They definately look cool on a black car but why are people so hard on the regular 02-03 tail lights?

does this look nice to you?

http://www.perplexer.com/maxima/tail.jpg

Don't look bad. The silver in the 02-03 lights probably wouldn't look so great with that gold color but the others it looks fine to me.

so then this looks better?

http://www.perplexer.com/maxima/tail2.jpg

No such thing really... AE stands for Anniversary Edition... the AE tails are really the same as the dark SE tails that came with the 00-01 Maximas. You can take almost any other 5th-5.5th Gen lights and paint/tint them to make them look like that or you can just go get the actual SE/AE tails and stick em on.

For example... this is before:
http://memimage.cardomain.net/member.../694087_11.jpg

And this is after:
http://memimage.cardomain.net/member.../694087_59.jpg

http://www.frankencar.com/stevesfolder/tails1.JPG
http://www.frankencar.com/stevesfolder/tails1.gif bigger version of above pic
http://www.frankencar.com/stevesfolder/tails2.gif
http://www.frankencar.com/stevesfolder/tails11.jpg
http://www.frankencar.com/stevesfolder/tails12.jpg
http://www.frankencar.com/stevesfolder/tails13.jpg
http://www.frankencar.com/stevesfolder/tails15.jpg

if you going to change around your tail lights i would recommend it, i think it looks the best and it's not that hard to do. no trying to pry open taillights ect......

what kind of paint and clearcoat did u use?
is the pain seethrough?

and how did u cover the lights

i brought the tail lights to a body shop and they had me leave my gas cap color so they could match it to my car. they used a dupont paint i think and regular clear coat. the paint was not see through, the tail lights looked like two nice round lights. i didn't have them go by the stock pattern of the lights, if you look at the first two pics i cut out templates for them to use.

who says you can't take them apart. You might have to cut them apart but you can get them apart. I have no write-up cause I suck at writing them. I didn't want to try to paint amber through bulb hole so I cut. not done, doing a little sanding cause I had to cut where you would see if opened trunk so I got some more work to do. Then stage two of them is Lamin-X.

whats with the term "AE" your tail lights when those are clearly SE style tail lights?

the say that most likely because all AEs have those kind of tail lights, while only some of the 5th gen SEs have them :gotme: theyre the same thing so it doesnt really matter what you call them....its just another way to get the point across

i have a good idea of what I'm going to do, I'll post back when I do it. i'm keeping my 5.5's, i like them, just need a little semi-modding.

myownnismo- like what you've done with the max....good pictures also.

i guess you can get them open but i've tried and it's too difficult so i just went and had them painted. it was easy to do and i think it looks great. make sure you put a new strip of the sealant around the taillights if you change them.

-steve