I've never cared for cars with large headlights, especially if they are lightly colored, which is IMO the biggest detraction from the Aura's design.

So I looked around for aftermarket headlights but only one appeared to be different from the stock design, the TYC 6929-90. However, it turns out they just look darker in the pictures due to lighting.

So I'm only left with the option of removing the lens and painting it myself (I'm thinking translucent smoke). The idea of taking apart a sealed unit is a bit scary, though I've seen a lot of videos of people doing it. The oven method also seems a bit sketchy but apparently it works.

I plan to leave the reflective parts of the main beams alone (for obvious reasons) and only paint the outer areas of the bezel that (as far as I know) are cosmetic. The only reflective part that I'm thinking about smoking is the blinker area, because it would look quite strange if I didn't. Hopefully that wouldn't affect the reflectivity too much, I'm thinking it won't since it's translucent.

Here's a Photoshop of what I have in mind:



I think leaving the edges and divider bar chrome will be a nice touch to kind of frame it and offer some contrast. Also mirrors the taillight design in a sense.

If anyone has done this before or has any tips, please chime in!

 

If that is indeed an inspection sticker in the bottom left of your windshield, I would investigate the maximum tint / smoke you are allowed to have on the running lights/ side markers/turn signals. Don't want to stand out in a crowd / attract too much attention from that. I have not done any of this but I know people who have smoked tail lights and turn signals. Most officers of the law will leave you alone if it does not really affect visibility Just don't attract attention to yourself for the wrong reasons.

What type of adhesive do you use to put that light back together and Ensure no moisture build up will occur?

 

That's a license plate. We only have emissions inspections here.

I didn't think to look that up. I figured any smoke/tint was illegal. It looks like the law in my state is that an indicator has to be visible from 300 feet in normal sunlight. No mention of tint specifically.

My whole inspiration for this was the Astra and Sky Redline headlights:



Though the design is different there; the turn signal reflector is built into a projector whereas the Aura uses the bezel as a reflector. But I can't imagine a moderate translucent smoke would reduce reflectivity much at all; it would just become kind of like what they call "black chrome".

I got pulled over once for the window tints and front plate not being mounted on the bumper. I honestly thought we were only required to have one plate in CT (the car never had it mounted from the day it was bought by my father, went 15 years without incident). The window tints are fully legal but he hassled me for not having the DMV certification sticker.

The most common ones I'm seeing are Butyl tape and RTV Sealant.

 

I'm sorry, I thought you were going to smoke part of the outer lens on the turn signals / parking lights. An inner smoking should be fine. I would suggest you make it two shades lighter than you think will be okay. You can always make it darker but you cannot make it lighter afterwards. Plus it will likely appear darker once reassembled since ambient light that hits the reflector and then your eye is not of the same brightness necessarily as you would see standing further away from the car.

 

Good point. I think the bottom half will need to be a bit lighter because it gets shade from the horizontal divider, whereas the top half gets direct sunlight.

This is the TYC replacement headlight that I bought because it looks darker, but it turns out it's just the lighting in the picture:


But it does give a good idea of what a smoked bezel would look like. I think I'm going to return the TYC though because the blinker is a really ugly shade of orange, whereas the OEM is more of an amber. I found a NOS OEM headlight for the same price.

 

Okay, finally some progress. So I ended up keeping the TYC headlight and it turns out the orange reflector pops right out, so I can swap it with the OEM reflector, it just means another headlight to open, unfortunately.

So I also bought a cheap, faded OEM replacement as a temporary headlight to use while the paint offgasses from the modified set.

I figured that would be a good test monkey since I haven't done any of his before. Heated the oven to about 225 degrees (conservative based on the advice I've read) and found the headlight JUST BARELY fits in my oven with like a 1/4" on every side. Gave it about 14 minutes and the sealant was still not quite soft enough, but I managed to get it apart because there was actually very little sealant used at all! The whole bottom side had no sealant that I could find. It was mostly in the corners.

So now I can see how the assembly fits together at least:



Originally, the plan was to paint everything but the inside of the high and low beam reflectors, but I'm going to try just painting that middle piece in the above picture and see how it looks.

Taped off the edges to get the chrome border I wanted. I thought about taping off that bar in the middle like originally planned but It seems like more trouble than it's worth, and will probably look better blending in with the black chrome anyway.



The next thing to worry about was paint. Google says headlight bulbs can get up to a couple hundred degrees. Luckily I found some Duplicolor black chrome translucent smoke for wheels, which can withstand up to 250 degrees.

At first, it didn't seem to be getting dark enough and every individual paint spatter was visible, but as it settled, it all flowed together nicely, and darkened up quite a bit. I ended up just doing one fairly wet coat.



The chrome parts came out awesome, but for some reason the textured silver parts came out inconsistent. I didn't go nuts cleaning it because it was just a test, so hopefully some degreaser will prevent that on the real headlights?

After removing the masking tape. Didn't get the cleanest lines where it crosses over that middle divider bar, but from a couple feet away it looks sharp. Also looks much darker indoors, of course:



Gotta give it some time to dry more, and then I'll reassemble it and see how it looks!

 

Looking good

 

Well, I could not get the TYC lamp apart to save my life. I'd seen somewhere that most TYC lamps use butyl but I'm pretty sure this one was permaseal. I wanted to at least steal that perfect new lens, but oh well. My fingers are still sore!

I ended up painting the inner bezel as well:





In direct sunlight it's not as dark as I'd hoped. I'm already debating taking it apart and darkening it up.



Looks more like I was expecting at dusk:

 

I like that they are not as bold as the wheels.
It's a nice soft accent.
And nobody looks at that part of the inner housing during the day. I like the way it looks at dusk and at night should be cool.
You don't want to open that up a second time.

 

I have a set of those wheels that came with fake aluminum wheel covers. I agree they look better without the wheel covers.