Repop a tail light or two?

[Crosley.In.AZ]

Tail lights on my 1948 Simca are ruff shape.  I have seen some new lens created.   Something I have never tried.

The broke in two lens has missing edges... the mostly 1 piece lens is warped - cupped inward.

not sure these are worth the effort.  maybe just bolt on some other design light to the car? Its for drag racing only now , not a street car.

[enjenjo]

Plastic or glass?

[idrivejunk]

If you wish to keep the housing for style, you could fashion a secondary housing from your choice of materials then install a bit smaller light in that.

Meaning bend, whittle, mold whatever stuff you want to use into a panel which fits the housing like a lens. Then get some tiny LED lamps to cram into that panel. Such as universal / auxiliary type lamps which are in all shapes and sizes. Perhaps cluster 2 or 3 on each side. I know they make tiny tails that go in the ends of rolled 50s truck bed rails, a pair of those on each side is a potential example. You get the point. They could be made flush and the fabbed secondary housing could be painted tail lightish red so the look from the stands don't change much.

Of course if you were to ebay your outrigger type housings or stands or whatever those are called, and if motorcycle saddlebag tail lights will pass tech... you could shave the turtle heads and mount those there.

And youtube U has bajillions of how to make lenses videos. I will shut up and listen now because I have not so much as dabbled in this. My main intent is to say the secondary housing theory.  Hope you find a low hassle solution.

[Crosley.In.AZ]

Plastic or glass?

The lens are plastic..    The broken lens has a better shape. But the edges that lug into the housing are mostly gone.

The other lens is shrunk up and cracked. The edges are still there.

Guess I could heat and reshape the 1 piece lens.  Repair and plastic weld the broken lens?  Maybe tint or dye them both a bit more red?

i have watchd a few videos on building new lens copies and repair.  Likely I would end up with a pile of plastic in a trash can.  

[jaybee]

I think to mold new ones you'd need to recreate the shape pretty accurately. To do that maybe use something like epoxy putty. I recently recreated a broken-off corner of my laptop that way, but your pieces need a lot more work. If you feel these lights are important to the character of the car and you really like them it could be done, but it would be a lot of careful hand work.

You could try to glue the old one back together and fill in any missing bits with resin. IMO if you did that you'd end up with variations in the color and visible cracks in the lens, at least when they're lit from behind. You still wouldn't be able to recreate the locating lug that way.

[Canuck]

Anyone on here that would be willing to scan them and print a couple of copies?