My Runin With A Tesco's Shopping Trolly

[SyCelicaGT]

Hi All,

Last night I went to Tesco's in Reading and when I came out to the car I noticed a shopping trolly had been parked very close to the car so I investigated further and noticed my rear lights had a large hole in them and several cracks comeing from the hole in the indicator. Some inconsiderate Wan*er has clearly discarded his/her shopping trollie and it has smacked into my rear light cluster. :censor: :censor: :ffs:

How ****** off was I! I asked the store manager to look on the CCTV but the camera was facing the cash machines so I have nothing to go on! Not happy!

Anyway... I got home and looked on the net for a new rear cluster and saw an auction ending on eBay within the hour for x2 GT4 rear clusters. So put a bid on them and got em for £31 inc delivery so not all is lost.

My question to you guys is. how much of a mission is it to replace the rear left cluster? Is it a garage job or can an amatur like myself do the job? I should imagine it is quite easy?

Cheers, and I hope you all had a great New Year!

Cr*p picture I know, I will try and get a better one in the morning!

[Bibbs]

Sorry to hear it mate .. I'm always @ Tesco and am shocked at the people who leave their trolleys anywhere ..

I'd have thought it'd be a 15 min job .. usually a few bolts and it's away ..

How about gluing the bust ones together again and then smoking the lenses? Then you can have a normal set and a black set ?

[SyCelicaGT]

Cheers Bibbs,

I thought it was an easy job but I did not want to start taking it apart and find I did not have to tools or know how to put it back together.

I was thinking this would be a prefect oppertunity to buy the updated rear light clusters from Fensport but I realised this was stupid when I could replace them for about a fifth of the money.

Is there anyway of stripping the amber film off the lenses? I have seen on this been talked about on the forum before, does anyone know how to do it as I may try it. I think smoked lights on a totally white car would look a little silly as it would over power the rear of the car, and appear a little chavy but I may try it and see what it looks like once I get the new clusters delivered as I am not a massive fan of the amber lights on the back and black would be better than amber.

[Bibbs]

The amber is not usually a film, but the colour of the plastic :(

You could spray them red?

[SyCelicaGT]

Hummm red, interesting. I will have to do a bit of Photoshop editing tonight me thinks!

[mikeb]

If they're anything like the gen 5 lights, they should be dead easy to remove (you have to remove them to change the bulbs, so it's got to be fairly simple). Three screws and some clips hold them in place. How do you change the bulbs on the gen 6 - if it's from inside the boot, then it might mean the lights are a bit harder to remove.

Whatever, I'm sure someone on here will know how it's done.

[sotal]

Sy - Will you end up with a spare drivers side rear cluster?? Mine has a hole in it - so if they're the same on the ST as the GT let me know how much you want by PM

[selfbuild]

Did the trolley mark your bumper aswell?

It must of been pushed pretty hard to crack the indicator lens.....

[adamgt]

yeah... must have been pushed hard. I can imagine its not too easy to smash them using an empty trolley, unless another car drove into the trolley pushing it into your car :censor:

as some1 else said, fairly easy to get unit off, just 3 bolts on inside of your boot. Then removing all the wires/bulbs

I hate to$$ers with cr@p cars that just dont care about other peoples!!

Once had some1 open open their door rather hard onto my car while i was in it! and they saw me there before they did it! I got out and had a go at them and they just walked off into the shop.. i dont normally get angry but he really p1ssed me off so i ripped his wipers off :!Removed!: :arrgg-matey:

[Leeky]

Si

The lights are the same for the ST, GT and GT4.

If you give me a bell when you get them i can pop over and give you a hand doing them if you like.

10min job

[chris202]

:ffs: i hate these kinda ubikh**es , that buy a car to get from a to b and dont realise some of us spend a lot of time and money on our cars . i work at glasgow airport and have to park in with all the daft **** stewardesses and every single car i've owned has had a few dings from there. I wish people would take a bit more care. :censor:

[SyCelicaGT]

Here is an updated photo close up of the damage to the lights, to be honest I think I came out of this quite well as there were zero bumps/dents on the body work as it was one of those small trollies which lined up nicley with the lights on my car!

Cheers Leeky, I may take you up on that offer, but I think I will have a stab at it this weekend, so I'll let you know, unless you want to pop over quickly anyway to take me out for a spin in the Four?

Sotal - Yes I will have a spare drivers side cluster if you want to take it off my hands. However, I will try to smoke the damaged light cluster first before I hand it over incase I still want to keep it for some reason, so... watch this space, I will let you know ASAP.

[sotal]

No Probs mate - just let me know if you end up with it spare Mine passed it's MOT but has a chip out of the bottom - just annoys me!

[spotipus]

""Is there anyway of stripping the amber film off the lenses? I have seen on this been talked about on the forum before, does anyone know how to do it """

i gave it a try on mine simple answer is forget it

they are glued on and the heat you need to melt the glue melts the !Removed! light there is tons of the stuff!!!!!!!!!

i bought a set to play with when i customised mine tried hot water acetone heat gun and slow bake non worked :ffs: but had a wonderful smell of burned plastic in the kitchen all day

i would recomend the spray paint option every time

[GTForbes]

the way to do it is in the oven but not a job i'd do on a good set of lights

[Leeky]

I used Thinners to disolve the glue on my old ST205's indicators

If you remove the custer, lever the corners up a bit and squirt thinners in with a syringe and let it soak for 20mins they are a lot easier to pull apart as it just melts the glue

[SyCelicaGT]

Wow that sounds well easy with the thinners! Will have to have a stab at that on the broken lens once I get it off! Hate the rear orange colour on the white car, looks crap when all the other indicators are clear!

Also can someone tell me what all the bulb types are on my car so I can order them all at once.

Low beam

High Beam

Side lights

Fog lights

Front indicators

Side indicators.

Cheers, wanna order them today to fit at the weekend, so quick replies appreciated. Cheers.

[sotal]

Low Beams are HB4's

[Leeky]

Just a thought, but if you want to ditch the orange rears and get clear ones then why not get the late spec import rears like i have?

[silvasurfa]

Don't think he was too happy paying for them Lee-

In my opinion, especially on a white celica, go for the red spray tint on the orange, other than the late spec lights its definately the best look for them!

[SyCelicaGT]

Cheers Lee, I have been perving over the late spec rears for a while now, but they are quite expensive for what they are.

Still haven't got round to photochopping the rear lights to black or red yet but I am inclined to agree with you that red would be best, but I don't like the thought of it looking a bit DIY when the amber light gives out a distorted red/orange colour, or with smoked lights where they look a little dull. But like I say need to sit in front a photshop machine for a few mins to see what it would look like.