Headlight Bracket Availability

[Shep]

Link to his Facebook? Wondering what he's said about the taillights.

[SpudMurphy]

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...type=3&theater

Quote ... "The new ones are a copy of the stock ones, no stainless.Stainless shoot pump up the price a lot, it is a lot of tooling. the 4 buckets are not the same, they have there own shape. as you can see on the stock one it has marks like RH1 RH2 so you can not mix it."

... and back in my day there were no computers :-)

[Shep]

Damn, needs me to log in to see more, and I don't have one... Ed, taillight clarification?

Also Mr. Maxime, got pics of the front with the headlights off? Interested to see how they look.

[mr_maxime]

[Shep]

Wow that's slick! You've convinced me it looks great! My turn to do this soon!

[mr_maxime]

Look for them on ebay. got them much cheaper

[SS Spoiler]

Are you doing some body work?

[Shep]

I mean, it IS the LFF. High price alone is enough to try it...

That said, good god man, who the hell swirled it? Slap that bastard upside the head, do you do donuts on the highway? No? Then don't sand donuts on straight grain. Both look like rubbish and are an inconvenient eyesore. Sand with the grain. *insert Darren's Shipping Wars clip here*

How do the headlights look when they're on, same angle?

[mr_maxime]

... I sanded the lff lol.

The LFF is damaged mostly beyond repair and I'm using it as a test piece for polishing the rest of the car. Hard to tell from this angle but it's mangled above the marker light with rust formed in the damage.

[Shep]

The LFF is damaged [-snip-] beyond repair

Fixed that for you.

I'm using it as a test piece for polishing the rest of the car. Hard to tell from this angle but it's mangled above the marker light with rust formed in the damage.

What did you use, steel wool? Man you're better off replacing it and working on your technique on store-bought aluminum at this point. Put the palm sander away, polished DeLoreans come with zero shortcuts and zero compromises. You've got a palette of terrible tools you're using to do a job that literally only needs sandpaper and patience to do. Word to the wise: when doing any kind of experimental work, rule #1 is never, EVER start on the most expensive example as a test piece. (EDIT: I should note that I went against this myself and destroyed no less than 10 taillights to get exact measurements out of them. They were garbage, and now they're NLA. The joys of blowing through dough without realizing it...) It's why every bottle of wood stain says to test "on an inconspicuous area first" -- if it goes badly, no one will notice. That on the other hand... I was on mobile before, SS spotted it immediately from a near-side profile.

The LFF hovers around $5,000 by the way -- every other panel to date goes around $1,000 (maybe higher if DMCH jacked their prices up again, but certainly not $5,000). If you can find a vendor willing to fix it up, do so now. Don't even think you can fix that kind of damage, you might even need to find out when Chris Nicholson will be in town and have him do it cheap ("X" hoods cost $5,000 to fix through DPI and was more expensive than replacing, Chris said $500 would do it, just to give an example of how amazing Chris is. I'm serious, hunt him down on a tech day that he makes an appearance repairing stuff and get in super-ass early. Your wallet and your car will thank you.)

Proper mirror-polished DeLoreans (which I have seen, and you can vary the amount of shine / luster by how fine of a grit you choose) use sandpaper on flawless panels. Emphasis is key there, if there's a ding, a tiny hairline scratch, even a speck of dust, it will show up in the end result, and will take easily hours to work out. It also helps to have stainless that has never been worked on before to get the maximum thickness possible. The thinner you have it, the less of a "sanding budget" you have to whittle away at. But they always, always sand with the grain. Never away. To demonstrate what the difference is, grab a crappy 2x4 that you don't care about and will throw away. Get large-grit sandpaper. 80 or lower if you have it. On the one side, sand it a bit lengthwise, with the wood's grain. On the other side, perpendicular to the grain. You'll aptly notice how quickly going against the grain leaves serious scratches in the wood. Same applies for metal.

I will also note that the actual "mirror finish" DeLoreans are insanely expensive to repair any bodywork on too. Tiny scratch? $1,000 from every vendor in existence. All sanding labor costs right there, you can't skimp on it. Polished doesn't look bad, and cuts that cost down dramatically as there's less grits involved. But that said, yeah you can do amazing with what you have once you get that LFF fixed! Chris Nicholson is your guy. Pretty much 90% of the people here can tell you that.