How to increase tail lamp reflection and brightness

[Cavalier342]

May sound slightly weird for a topic, but bare with me on this one...

Ok, start off by disconnecting the tail lamp wiring connectors, unclip and tuck away the wiring to the side. Undo the 4 bolts that hold the units in place. An 8mm socket with an extension is well suited here, but it is tricky to get it to the bolts on the wing sides because of the interior trim. I also found that an 8mm ring spanner is quite useful although fiddly. Unless you happen to be Magneto from X-Men, or just lucky, you may well indefinitely drop a bolt or the socket bit trough the gap at the bottom. It won't go far and a magnetic rod will come in very useful here.
So, with the tail lamp units removed, get some kitchen foil, a pair of scissors and some adhesive material(blue tack worked fine for me)...
First of all, get some tissue and clean out all the dust and whatever else from inside the unit itself. The lens itself is permanently glued onto the plastic bulb holder section, so it will be tricky getting every nook and cranny. Once it's clean enough, get small bits of blue tack, and stick inside the bulb holders, on the flat surfaces. Then cut small pieces of foil, rough measurments, and place them inside, onto the blue tack and flatten them out. Its a bit fiddly getting the foil flat inside, so fold it in a U-pipe shape, slot in through the circles, and flatten out. Thin fingers or a pen or anything similar will be helpful here. The foil should flatten out fairly easy, just make sure the corners are nice and flat. If you cleaned the dust off well, the blue tack will stick very well.

Once you have the foil inside the unit, flatten out the edges, and make sure its nice and smooth so that it wouldn't touch the bulb. Try not to use anything sharp to flatten it, as it will tear the foil easy. You will find that the bottom section (sidelight/rear foglight) will already have a metallic reflector panel fitted in. Wipe it free of any dust, and fit a large enough foil piece on the bottom of that section. Basically, just cover the 4 sections, brakelight, turn signal, reverse light, and sidelight. Make sure it's in there nice and smooth, shake the unit about to see if anything comes loose, if not, job done. Its simple enough, took me about 45 mins from start to finish. When you are done, test it out by moving the unit about in direct light and shining a flashlight on it in the dark to see the increased reflection.

The result... much better reflection from the outside of the unit, and the lights are slightly brighter because the light is caught by the foil and reflected out. Before, the light was wasted on the dark plastic and went nowhere. Hence dim lights. The results are much better in the dark than in sunlight, so it may be a useful thing to do before next winter. Which in this country, you just don't know when it will come lol.

So when you next have an afternoon filled with boredom, give it a go I may edit this post in the future should i decide to change any lines. I will create a discussion post too in the discuss forum.
Have fun..
Andrei