S2 Taillight Housing Colour

[eddiecross]

'69 S2.
Metal housings for the rear lights. Primed and ready. Couldn't find any traces of paint. Black or Bodycolour?

Thx
Eddie

[ernie]

Mine have just been done (as I understand) in body colour...it may not be correct re originality but looks so much better as blends in withthe background colour of the body

[Gfhug]

If you are still not at the stage of fitting the tail-lights then consider getting Marekh's led lights instead of re-fitting the originals. They include reverse lights which means you can ditch the original reverse lights and put straight exhaust pipes and get rid of the awful square number plate.

See the S2 aesthetics thread.

Geoff

[MarekH]

Dear Eddie,

I think the originals will have been chrome plated, which is why you won't find any paint on them.

If you want to see some of the rear lenses I have made, pop over - I am only half an hour away near Guildford.

kind regards
Marek

[PeterCrespin]

I think the external housings (at the back of the chromed S2 lamps themselves) were galvanized or generic silver painted. With the chrome side trim in place, the sheet metal housings are almost invisible anyway unless you go ferreting around the back of the car.

I've done them sIlver and body colour but it made no difference unless you left the chrome side trims off so you could see the housing.

[Nickleback]

Mine are still the XKE FHC May 70 originals, a nice mixture of Old English White tinged with rust but as Pete say's you dont really see them, so I would keep them body coloured.

[eddiecross]

Thanks everyone. I'll make with the silver paint as the car is that colour.

Cheers
Eddie

[politeperson]

Not a million miles away from this then.

Web Rear.jpg (123.69 KiB) Viewed 6693 times

[eddiecross]

Hopefully. Take a bit of work though.

Whens It's finished.

015_SAS.jpg (129.99 KiB) Viewed 6675 times

Thx
Eddie

[mark10337]

I very much doubt they were chrome as they do have a chrome finisher over them, so there wouldn't have been any point. Mine were black, but I doubt that was original and body colour is my bet as there aren't any other external black painted parts. Everything is body colour.

[Steve Marshall]

Mine were definitely zinc plated with a bit of pale blue overspray.

Apart from the accidental crap partial repaint I am pretty sure that this was the original finish in early 69. Nothing about my car suggests that any previous owner could have been arsed to remove these housings, strip the paint, and replate them.

They couldn't even be bothered to open the bonnet when changing it from carmen red to light blue. Being in North Texas meant that the plating survived pretty well. Plenty of other components have their original dull zinc coating intact, possibly it was BZP 48 years ago.

So I got them re-plated in dull-ish zinc plate.


Steve