I'm looking into opening up the taillights on my 03 to customize them, unfortunately it looks like they were ultra sonic welded from the factory. Has any one else here opened up these taillights, or has theories about how to get inside them? Any help/tips are appreciated, thank you.

 

I think people put them in the oven at 150* or so for about 5 minute increments. Pry gently with a plastic spatula when you pull them out after that 5 or so minutes.

 

I have in the past did the oven routine on my headlights, it worked. But last time I had another guy build me custom ones. What was interesting it he used a dremel with the thin wheel and simply cut the housing apart, did his magic and then used an epoxy to seam the 2 pieces back together. Its been 4 years or so and no problems. Water from washing / condensation does not get in. Here is a pic of that procedure. Perhaps the same method would work on taillights. The oven routine is sketchy in that one constantly fears of breaking the lense if you pull to hard, melting something, you get my drift. But I have done it myself before. Do one at a time, wrap in towel, blah blah blah. The tough part is getting things back together, clamped into place etc. The cut and epoxy system was by a guy who builds custom headlights, so I suspect it is time efficient and a sound method.look at the strip of the black epoxy. Looks like he masked off the area, applied epoxy as needed to cut edges. Pushed them together, perhaps more epoxy, smooth it out, removed the tape after it cured and viola, done...






Housing cut apart with dremel wheel blade to modify headlights, then closed / sealed with epoxy. Time effective over baking...







Demon eyes of the Devils Guard 2002 Monte Carlo SS Turbocharged 3.8...

 

I had some ideas for custom tail lights, but never spent the time on it. I ended up buying some LED tail lights. But, I would love to see what people might created

 

LEDrwr is a great site for custom headlight and tail light builds. They do amazing work, but you DEFINITELY gotta have some money to throw around.

 

Thank you all for the replies! Lots of great info here, the cut and epoxy method looks like it'll be the fastest but not the cheapest, definitely better suited to my skills as well. @ZIPPY02 Your car is definitely my halo car as far as lighting goes lol, so maybe I'm biased toward the cutting method for that reason.