When I bought my corvette last year the original owner had smoked the marker lights, tail lights, fog lights and backup lights with a spray on tint. The tail lights and marker lights are not too bad, but to make the clear lenses dark he applied a good .010 of tint to them. This makes the light housings look like they are full of used motor oil when the lamps are on, and renders them completely useless.

I debated what I could do to make them work correctly and retain the blacked out look. A few weeks ago walking through a home improvement store I found what was called expanded mesh which is used for security type screen doors. It came in a 4'x8' sheet, is powder coated black and around .020 thick for $24.00.

I removed the fog lights and sanded the tint off with 320 on a DA, then began fitting the expanded mesh to the light housing. Keeping the mesh pattern parallel to the edges of the light made forming it much easier. After I got it formed to the housing I hit the lens with 500, 800, 1000 and then some mirror glaze.



I purchased some HID 55watt 4500K H10 units from a company I have had very good experiences with in the past. I mounted the transformers to the top of the fog lamp housings.



This picture shows the mesh covered lens on the passenger side and the tinted one on the drivers side.



This is with both lights completed.



A view of what the mesh looks like installed. At all angles but head on it still has the blacked out appearance.



Because this took a lot less time than I thought it would I decided to try the expanded mesh on the fender vents as well. I am very happy with the outcome for a total of $75.00 + tax. When I have some more time I plan to do the back up lights and something around the exhaust to tie it together.

 

looks good

 

Looks good! Have you gotten any bugs stuck in them yet, and how was it to get them out?

DJ

 

The metal mesh is tight against the lens and should wipe clean fairly easy. The ability to clean it easy will determine if I use it in the grille area.

 

Dooh ... buzzkill!

Looks great, OP!

 

Nice mod! Thanks for sharing.

 

You have been a busy person!

 

In February I purchased some Z06 mufflers from a forum member. I cut the tailpipes off my original mufflers and welded them to the Z06 mufflers since they reduce to 2.5 inches at the muffler anyway. I installed them without hooking up the valves and drove it for a month before cutting open the mufflers and doing the "mod". With the small amount of highway driving I do the exhaust being "open" all the time does not bother me. Next week though I am taking a 2800 mile trip in it and decided to hook up the valves.

Keeping in line with "cheap mods" I of course did not buy a mild to wild kit. Instead I purchased a Logisys 12V 15A Remote Control (RM02) relay for $17.99



I connected it to a EVS9 Duralast EGR Vacuum Solenoid for $15.99. This valve is normally closed which means the exhaust is open or loud until the remote is activated. To hook everything else up I had to purchase $8.00 of vacuum hose and an $8.99 brake line that I ran through the passenger side rocker panel.



Other than the pain of hooking up the vacuum line to the back of the intake manifold the installation was simple and had a total cost of $50.97.

The one thing I did notice is the system does not have enough volume to allow the valves to stay closed under load. To remedy that I picked up a vacuum canister at the local pick and pull from a late 80's T-Type Regal for $5.00. Most GM cars during that era have them mounted to the front of the air conditioning housing on the passenger side firewall. The size of this will make it very easy to mount inside the front passenger side wheel well where I mounted the valve and relay.

 

I like it! Ingenious, yet simple solution