Rainlord
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- June 16, 2017
- Messages
- 178
- Reaction score
- 101
- City, State
- Zurich, Switzerland
- Year, Model & Trim Level
- Explorer 2012 XLT
For the last 2 days I've been trying to open the broken tail light I had because I want to potentially use some of the parts for a headlight build. I must say, they did a hell of a job gluing these together! I tried everything, including a heat gun, baking it, and in the end I only managed to break off some pieces of the front plastic. So I took a dremel to it, and just for fun I'll post how it looks inside. It's actually really well built in every regard. Everything is on very solidly, screwed in place with many screws, and nothing feels cheap. (The rusty screws are from my water damage)
The brown boards are for the Z-like lights and the white ones stick down into the reflector for the turn signal lights.
Here's the LED boards. I'm holding the turn signal one, the three on the right are for the Z-lights. The black shrinkwrapped things in the wiring are the control boards, there's two of those. All the wires are proper gauge, compared to most china stuff I've ripped apart that has like 3 strands of copper in them.
As I've taken out all the components I'm currently re-baking it for much longer to see how long it really needs to be in before the glue lets go, in case someone else wants to open theirs for whatever reason
. I'll update if there's any success.
Edit: After 30 min at 140C/280F (I tried 120C/250F yesterday for 20 min with no luck), the general plastic of the light was quite soft, and I managed to pry the parts apart, however, I'd say it was too hot as it's likely to bend pieces so that they don't go back together anymore. So I'd say 30-40 min @ 120C/250F should do the job, and if not, try increasing by 10 degrees and keep trying. Make sure it's resting on wood in the oven and isn't touching anything that's metal.
The brown boards are for the Z-like lights and the white ones stick down into the reflector for the turn signal lights.
Here's the LED boards. I'm holding the turn signal one, the three on the right are for the Z-lights. The black shrinkwrapped things in the wiring are the control boards, there's two of those. All the wires are proper gauge, compared to most china stuff I've ripped apart that has like 3 strands of copper in them.
As I've taken out all the components I'm currently re-baking it for much longer to see how long it really needs to be in before the glue lets go, in case someone else wants to open theirs for whatever reason
. I'll update if there's any success.Edit: After 30 min at 140C/280F (I tried 120C/250F yesterday for 20 min with no luck), the general plastic of the light was quite soft, and I managed to pry the parts apart, however, I'd say it was too hot as it's likely to bend pieces so that they don't go back together anymore. So I'd say 30-40 min @ 120C/250F should do the job, and if not, try increasing by 10 degrees and keep trying. Make sure it's resting on wood in the oven and isn't touching anything that's metal.
