I was looking towards the 2012 tails but they are too expensive to replace. My buddy from Rutgers has a 2012 Maxima and he had his tinted I think it looks good

 

just runs the flow of the car but thats just my ideas

 

i assume that it's not legal? it looks awesome!

 

LOL It's illegal here in NJ but so far I've never been hassled. I had a cops pass by me sometimes and half the time I look at them, he/she is eating donuts or looking at the computer. But if worst comes worst, I'll just peel it off then cling it back on. You should tint yours BTW. What year Max do you have. If you have the '12, don't tint it cause it looks good the way it is IMO

 

How's this stuff holding up for you?

 

It's holding up great. If your going to do this to your Max, take your time to make it perfect. I washed my Max 3 days ago in 40 degree weather and it held up well. No peeling yet. I recommend removing your tail lights. I tried installing the tint while my tail lights were on my car but it was difficult.

 

Thanks. I decided to go with Night Shades today. Have the lights pulled and masked. Will be painting tomorrow. Fingers crossed it comes out good.

 

Nice. Yeah night shades are also good since they are more permanent. I think I'll to the same when spring comes. My friend did it to his Acura TL and they came out awesome so I'm paying him to to them for me. He's charging me $60 for both. I don't trust myself painting my own .

 

$60 is a good deal. I was nervous about painting mine, but I'm in the middle of doing it now, and it's going good so far. Hopefully by the end of the day I'll be all smiles.

 

How many coats of VHT nightshades are you doing BTW? I'm doing 3 coats VHT, and 4 coats of clear coat.

 

3 coats of night shades your tail lights will be BLACK and not let much light through. i painted mine and did just 1 coat of nightshades and 4 coats of clear. here's a couple pics



the exact shade i wanted

 

Well I really really wanted to go three coats, but I travel a lot and don't need to get ticketed hours away from home. My main goal was just to get that bright red out of there. So I did one coat of Night Shades and three coats of clear coat. It's not quite as glassy as I was hoping, so I'll have to do some more polishing another day.

 

I think your right. 3 coats are a little too much. My buddy's TL taillights are kinda on the dark side when I saw him take off today. You think 2 coats is ok? I like yours. Was it a pain to make it glossy?

 

after I did 1 I thought it was plenty. not sure how 2 would look cause I just wanted that dark red color. it wasn't too hard to make it glossy just paint in as wind-free of an environment as possible (moving air is partially what causes orange peel) and lightly wetsand/polish em back to a shine. meguiar's compound works great to polish em back up

 

I used Meguiar's compound as well, but they were cloudy. I picked up some Meguiar's Mirror Glaze and that helped a lot, but it's still just not quite there yet. It looks 10x better, just not as glassy as the clear coat looked before wet sanding.
Did you polish by hand? Would it be better to use an orbiter to shine them up?

 

i polished by hand, but ive since pulled them back off and re-polished a few more times. i got a porter cable for Christmas so I'm gonna pull that out when the weather warms up a lil more and really go to town on em. im sure the orbiter would do a better job if you know how to use one

 

Would you think a regular buffer would work? My father had one which he barely uses :eek5:. BTW I know this is kinda off topic but LED's below your headlights, where did you get them from? I saw one from carID but they don't look the same as yours.

 

it should be fine. again the key here is to know how to use a buffer because you could burn through the clear/nightshades you just put on if you dont know how to use it. i learned on a beat up corolla if that helps put it in perspective lol

re: the LEDs - they're v-leds switchback DRL strips (which since have been out of stock) but they have normal white LED ones. they're by far the brightest I've ever seen in person, they make OEM Benz DRL's look dim in comparison. I did have to modify the LED strip a bit (trim the edges and re-seal with silicone) and trim a spot in the brake-duct vent (down by the fogs) so it'd fit

 

Question for OP. What is the official color of your car? It looks a lot like mine but the lighting outside distorts the grey and metallic slate colors....

 

Well, I used VHT nightshades on a junk yard tail light and they turned out crappy. I did all the pre-sandings, did 3 layers of VHT and 4 layers of clear coat, sanded it and used rubbing compound and they look terrible. I can't trust and see myself painting my tail lights so I'm deciding to bring them to a body shop.

Can someone please tell me what I should tell the painter to paint my tail lights the correct way without making them too blacked out?

 

you could use the laminex film to tint the rear taillights if you dont want them perminantly tinted.

 

I was thinking of doing that but my buddy tells me to paint it if I don't want any peeling. I think I'll give Lamin-X a try. The previous shop that tinted my windows tinted my tails for free but they did a crappy job. I'm using gilla peel and cling but my driver side keeps on peeling. I heard Lamin-X is a thick material.

 

ouch, sorry to hear that bro. glad to hear u tried on a junk yard light first though. i learned how to paint on my engine panels and if you watch a lot of youtube videos and read up it's straight forward you just need a lot of patience.

pro shops use a tinted clear coat to tint tail lights, dont go too dark though unless you want to be sanding it back off later

 

I didn't know pro shops have tinted clear coats. I thought they used black paint Goes to show my lack of knowledge of paint.

 

nice job, looks real nice with the color of the car. i don't think the cops should give you too much trouble

 

Just got done tinting my tail lights. This time I used VHT nightshades (3 coats) I'm happy with them. NO more peeling and problems.

BEFORE:


AFTER:




I removed the Nissan logo to give it that clean look. Took me 3 days to get these shined

 

The Nissan logo is not bolted on? Hmmmm...

 

Yeah it's not bolted on.... Thank god. I removed it after I installed my tails but it was a pain. This type of weather here in NJ right now is not good to remove badges. Took me all day to remove it. I used a heat gun to soften it but it was still hard. I'm lucky I didn't scratch my paint.