Tail Lights

The design of the tail lights and the sheet metal on the 308 leaves a lot to be desired when trying to keep them clean.  In addition, my car has a lot of miles on it, so there is more than the usual exhaust residue on the rear.

Since I had the panels off from behind the rear lights to work on the license plate, I took the opportunity to remove the four light units and give everything a good cleaning.  Taking out these lights is difficult unless one has a 7mm long socket.  My long sockets start at 9mm and Sears is an hour round trip.  I went to the local Home Depot and bought a set of metric nut drivers figuring that the shaft would be hollow the whole length.  Not so, as the hollow portion ended about 1/4" too soon.  I ended up using some vinyl tubing a little smaller than the diameter of a 7mm socket.  By using a heat gun, I was able to stretch it over the socket and it fit tight once it cooled.  Since these nuts aren't put on tightly, just turning the socket using the tubing was enough to get them off.

Once I had the light units off, I found that there were several cracks and one of the studs was broken out of the plastic.  I was able to find several of the plastic pieces that had broken off.  By using acrylic cement an a hypodermic like applicator, fixing the cracks was easy.  Just open them slightly, add cement and hold closed for 1 minute to so.  Fixing the stud was like a jig saw puzzle with about 8 pieces, 3 dimensions and limited access.  After gluing all of the pieces in place, I took a 4mm tap and cleaned up the threads.  Then I screwed in the stud and added more cement to the plastic would adhere to the threads.  I'll just be extra careful when I tighten up the nut on this stud.

To start the cleaning, I had to use some polishing compound to take off the accumulated layers of exhaust residue and dirt.  Here's the before and after pictures.

Then I spent quite a bit of time cleaning the light units.  They had the same crud as the body.  I used the plastic compound on a buffing wheel to do the cleaning and polish out any scratches.

I also had to glue down the various pieces of carpet I took loose in trying to figure out how to take the panels off.

Here's everything cleaned up and put back together.

Now I just have to be more diligent with the Q-Tips and keep the areas around the lights clean.

The last task was installing the jack kit hold down.  There's two metal brackets behind the license plate area designed to hold a rubber strap that keeps the jack kit in that triangular area.  The top is held on with a pin with the bottom being a hook that fits in a slot in the bottom bracket.

I'm not quite sure why the strap is loose unless the tool kit is supposed to be stored there too.

After checking with a couple of other owners, yes, the tool kit fits in front of the jack kit under the strap.