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2G How to remove 2gb Talon fog light lense?

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JeffwithaG

5+ Year Contributor
206
65
Nov 30, 2017
Flemington, New_Jersey
Hi, I picked up some parts for a 2gb Talon front end swap. I got a set of fog lights with brackets, but one fog light has rust inside. The lense has a chip and appears to be missing some of the black gasket or adhesive around the perimeter of the lense. I'm assuming one or both of these issues allowed water to get in over the years.

Anyway, my question is how can I remove the lense to clean all the rust out and make it look better? Does anyone know if there is adhesive like the headlight housing? Can I stick it in the oven at like 250 degrees and separate the lense from the housing? It also has a few metal "retaining" clips. Are these a redundancy to keep the glass in place? I don't want to break this light since it was super hard to find. I also couldn't locate any other threads on the topic. Thanks in advance!

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The metal clips are used during assembly to keep pressure on the sealant while it's curing. You will need heat to get the lens off, and lower and longer will be better. I've never done fogs before, but for headlights I typically do 200 degrees for a half hour or so, then I use a heat gun while I'm working to keep them warm. The design and assembly of these fogs looks identical to 2ga and 2gb Stanley headlights, so I would expect disassembly to be the same.

Often with water intrusion, the reflective coating on the bowl degrades or disintegrates. You won't know until you get them open, but I would be worried that cleaning the fog lights would result in unpainted plastic reflector bowls. I have used chrome paint on a vestigial reflector bowl in one of my projector retrofits and while it looks okay at a distance, it's not a functional repair. I doubt it would matter that much in fog lights, but I would recommend against it in reflector headlights. Hopefully yours is just a matter of cleaning, since replacement 2gb Talon fogs aren't the most common.
 
The metal clips are used during assembly to keep pressure on the sealant while it's curing. You will need heat to get the lens off, and lower and longer will be better. I've never done fogs before, but for headlights I typically do 200 degrees for a half hour or so, then I use a heat gun while I'm working to keep them warm. The design and assembly of these fogs looks identical to 2ga and 2gb Stanley headlights, so I would expect disassembly to be the same.

Often with water intrusion, the reflective coating on the bowl degrades or disintegrates. You won't know until you get them open, but I would be worried that cleaning the fog lights would result in unpainted plastic reflector bowls. I have used chrome paint on a vestigial reflector bowl in one of my projector retrofits and while it looks okay at a distance, it's not a functional repair. I doubt it would matter that much in fog lights, but I would recommend against it in reflector headlights. Hopefully yours is just a matter of cleaning, since replacement 2gb Talon fogs aren't the most common.


Thank you for the reply! I'm going to give it a shot. Hopefully it isn't too bad inside once I crack them open. I have some chrome paint I can use to get it as good as possible. At this point, I want it to look good aesthetically. I don't drive the car at night very often and my current fog lights aren't super helpful anyway.

Do you have any recommendations on what type of sealant to use when I reassemble it?
 
Stuck it in the over at 200 degrees for about 20 minutes. Used a metal putty knife around the seam between the glass and housing and it came apart super easy. The reflective portion is super damaged. Once it cools down, I will see how bad the damage is.

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Oh. Wow. Is that rust or mud? It looks like it could be either. I've used a lot of different methods for sealing headlights. I've just kept the original sealant and heated it up before assembly, which often doesn't seal. I've used RTV which was awful and you should absolutely not do that. I now have a roll of butyl sealant that came with one of my many orders from TheRetrofitSource so I heat up the housing and scrape out the old sealant, then fill the channel with butyl rope, heat, and assemble. That's the ideal solution if you have some. I'm sure that there are cheaper places to get it.
 
Oh. Wow. Is that rust or mud? It looks like it could be either. I've used a lot of different methods for sealing headlights. I've just kept the original sealant and heated it up before assembly, which often doesn't seal. I've used RTV which was awful and you should absolutely not do that. I now have a roll of butyl sealant that came with one of my many orders from TheRetrofitSource so I heat up the housing and scrape out the old sealant, then fill the channel with butyl rope, heat, and assemble. That's the ideal solution if you have some. I'm sure that there are cheaper places to get it.

Cool, I will look for some of that. Its all rust and scale. There are two screws in there, I hope that's all that holds the reflective piece in the housing. Then I can pop it out, prep and paint. I want to sandblast the brackets, but of course the two screws are stripped on this one. So I will have to work for it.
 
Had to drill out the screws that hold the housing to the bracket. Also got the reflective part out of the housing, there are two small screws and the gear looking adjuster that hold it in place. I'm going to clean it up as best as I can, but the years of water intrusion and just sitting in there really took a toll.

I figured I would keep updating. Hopefully it helps someone out in the future.

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I have a pair of 2gb talon fogs with broken lenses if you're interested. I was saving them to for my talon conversion and knocked them off of a shelf. They don't have any rust, and they're not doing me any good anymore. Let me know if you're interested.
 

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