August 7th, 2002 Quick follow up on discussions at page 6 of HybridZ Tail Light topic threadabout melting plastic tail lights down to form new ones. Brought my $2.00 toaster oven home today and started some first experiments with some spare broken tail light material laying around here. Nothing earth shaking to report, but first problem, maybe? appears to be that clear plastic turned diffused translucence when heated up far enough to melt to point of being bendable. First documentation collage photo is shown below which may say more than words can. Also found a box of old tail light lens examples that I started collecting years ago. I've begun polishing and photographing their shapes and refraction patterns to show in my lens refraction pattern library later on.

So, can tail light plastic be heated to temperatures suitable for bending and other transformations without loosing it's clear properties?? Hmmmmmm?? What about that infrared bar, like Terry Oxendale has used? How does that act on plastic? Anybody understand technical reason why plastic looses it's clear properties when heated? Is there a counter measure to it happening?

Eric Neyerlin - owner of ZPARTS.COM