Water in tail light???

zzyzzx · 06-03-2013, 09:40 AM

I had a burned out turn signal light bulb in my 1999 Alero (just shy of 38K miles on it). The issue being that the bulb burned out because the section of the tail light it was in was halfway filled with water! I have no idea how it got there, but as I was leaving someplace where I had parked for 1.5 days (in a parking garage, up at a angle, and in the covered part) is when it happened. Obviously the water had been there for some time and me parking the car like that is what did in the bulb (submerged it for some time). But how can I prevent this from happening again? I could not find anything wrong with this tail light assembly. We have had some really strange and harsh rain here lately and that's probably when it got in, but still.

Of course, I was on my way home from vacation 150 miles away from home when the bulb goes bad.

I did search for this and could not find any mention of this here.

sleepyalero · 06-03-2013, 09:46 AM

somewhere around the edge of the tail light is a leak. tough part is finding it. either re seal your whole tail light with caulk, or just buy a new tail light, all you can do.

just run a small bead of caulk in between the tail and the rubber lining, let it dry, if it happens again, seal the back edge of the tail with caulk. believe me, ive had to fiddle with mine for a week till i got the leak takin care of.

03glgold · 06-03-2013, 07:41 PM

unless in the weird rain it was making it between the housing and the body of the car and getting through the whole the light attaches in

Truth · 06-03-2013, 07:44 PM

Aye, I had the same problem with my drivers side housing. All i did was reseal it and never had a problem again

zzyzzx · 06-07-2013, 10:01 AM

OK, now that I have it off, I can see that one just removes the gasket, puts some sort of sealant in the V there, then put the gasket back on. The existing gasket on mine is partially not sticking on already anyway. There was someone else in this thread where they actually took it apart and rechromed it:

http://www.aleromod.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33954

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ttop191

what i ended up doing is taking apart the tail light, taking rubbing alcohol and cleaning all the old "chrome" and spraying it with that chrome looking rattle can, came out great couldn't even tell it was different

Although I would think that one is taking some risk if one tries to separate the back part from the front part.

zzyzzx · 06-10-2013, 11:23 AM

I ended up re-gluing in parts of the tail light gasket with some rubber cement. That was after I got some silver paint over the blackened parts. If I had more time I could have done a better job of that, but that can wait until the car is parked for the winter. A foam pad on an L shaped piece of wood would have worked good. People have posted about how to remove the "black gunk" but I really think that the "black gunk" is missing reflective material, so it really just needs new paint there like tTop191 did. I just don't want to take the whole thing apart.

zzyzzx · 06-14-2013, 10:43 PM

Update:

I am still getting water in the tail light. I removed it again and put some more water in it to find exactly where it is leaking. It wasn't the seal, it has a large, but hard to see crack about 6" long across the middle. I put some tape over it, but obviously this thing needs to be replaced. So the lesson here is if you have this problem, do a test to see where the water is coming in from first.

jawa · 06-15-2013, 12:16 AM

Super glue it

zzyzzx · 06-17-2013, 11:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jawa

Super glue it

You do mean super glue instead of tape until I can get another good one at a JY, right? Or do you think super glue would be a good permanent fix? Or that I have nothing to lose by trying and it won't look as bad as a piece of tape?