Volvo 480 Club Europe

Hello everyone,
I would like to disassemble the lenses of the front clusters in order to repaint the internal reflective material,
I have two sets of orange indicators both with nice lenses but very dull interiors.

I know Joep Vrijling has remanufactured the DRL lenses, so there has to be a "safe" procedure to disassemble - reassemble the clusters.
I think I read over in the Facebook group that it could be done leaving the unit in hot water (75°c) until the sealant is soft enough to separate the halves, any comment on that?

If I get enough courage to do so I will be trying to do a set next week and document the process for future use.

Thanks
Giovanni

I've done a few now, and done exactly that.

Big old bowl of hot soapy water and let them soak. Helps clear years of crud from the plastics too!

I immersed them in a bucket of boiling hot water and let it soak for a while, then I carefully pried them apart.
Only to find out that the reflective layer inside the lens was completely gone!
So be prepared to add a coat of reflective paint onto the reflector, to restore the brightness of the lenses.

brinkie wrote:I immersed them in a bucket of boiling hot water and let it soak for a while, then I carefully pried them apart.
Only to find out that the reflective layer inside the lens was completely gone!
So be prepared to add a coat of reflective paint onto the reflector, to restore the brightness of the lenses.

Ok that was the idea, the reflective paint is completely gone in mine while the lenses are in good conditions, what have you used?
One of those "chrome effect" spray cans? Did you use a glossy paint to do the first coat or just the "reflective" one?

Is it easy to remove also the indicator lenses or did you remove only the DRL ones?

And then, when everything is pained nicely, what is a good product to glue everything back?
I was thinking about using silicone sealant so that it can be opened up again easily with a dull knife but it is probably not strong enough.

Wish I had read this before doing one of mine, I used a dremel which although successful was fiddly and even with a lot of care I did do a small amount damage, which you won’t see when it goes back together.

Not put it back together yet so I would also like to know the best stuff to use.

The reason for only doing one was a deer. Luckily only a glancing blow, lucky for the deer and the wing however not so lucky for the indicator, the DRL lens did survive so was able to pick up cheap replacement lamps with melted DRL. It then became clear that there was a difference between the ones on the car and the replacements, one set had silver reflectors and the other didn’t.

I think there may have been 2 designs of reflector as having taken them apart having NO sign of any leftover silver what so ever even under the sealant is unlikely.

For info I used a plastic primer and chrome effect enamel paint from Hobbycraft. They now look the same when held together and put side by side but won’t know if it lasts till the car is put back together.