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D3 - Lights Headlights, xenons, foglights. Everything outside the car that glows

 
 
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Old 13th October 2018, 06:54 PM
snapdragon snapdragon is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2011
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Default Cracking Rear Lights

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I recently came back from the USA and the car had been at Manchester Airport for a few weeks.
As soon as I got to the back of the car I saw the rear lights' cracks had got much worse and even had a 1" vertical crack in the middle too.
These lights were made in 2010. I see 20 year old cars without this problem.

I have removed them and split the red lenses off, they are not meant to come off but I split them off the glue is brittle like cyanocrylate.
I have flooded the reverse lens with Ultraclear UV-resistant epoxy on the inside, regrettably, it take 72 hours to cure.
The whole lens is covered in crazing when held up to the light, millions of cracks in all directions. The lens is made of a clear outer layer and a thicker red inner layer which has the strip cut out for the reversing light. The inner red material is not cracked at all, it seems to be in the clear outer layer. Sadly I damaged one on the corner.

This also happened to some perspex/acrylic stuff in our kitchen, a small microwave pan and a lemon juicer after they were put in the dishwasher, first the miniscule crazing and eventually a big stress relief crack. It seems Audi used the wrong kind of plastic, this affects the R8 and A6 too.

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Last edited by snapdragon; 23rd April 2020 at 09:18 AM.
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