Back working on my car and found trunk has some water in it,located the leak to the LH side light,sealing rubber is good but lense is bent so seal not contacting housing.
I remember some folks heating their poor fitting aftermarket ones to correct this issue ,would be interested to hear from those that have done this.
Kinda cautious about this as its a genuine lense and in good condition besides.
TIA,cheers

First thing to check is whether your leak is the lense or actually is the housing. I've got 3 sets of housings here most of which are trash because of warpage. The since the mounting points are different for the lamp housing and the lense, pressure is not the same for each.

My solution turned out to be replica housings so I could use my new NOS Hella lenses.

Thanks will check that but suspect lense,cheers.

Didn't have the balls to re-bend the lense so went in trying to find the cause of the leak,turns out the leak was @ the opposite end of the lense due to no seal contact.
Popped out the seal and reversed it in the lense and it still fitted nice and evidence it was sealing all the way around @ all points ...a win ,no more leaks.
Couple of days later I also noted my new trunk lid rubbers had about 80% contacting the lid so reset the rear stops and adjusted the latch...another win.
Well pleased as an easy solution .

I have some water infiltration as well. I’m suspecting the taillite lense seals. They are new. I wonder if they are directional. Time to investigate.
Glad you had positive results Dean.
Cheers mate.

The first set of tail light lens seals I bought were complete junk. Much smaller diameter and harder than the original seals. I bought a second set from AA and they took quite awhile to arrive, but were a dead match for the originals and sealed much better.

Cheers my friend,results are good so far but more rain testing will show up any further leaks as it is now raining hard now after a long dry spell.
Funny really as never had a leak before ,the car has been in undercover storage for a long time during my house move.
Your car looks great,hope you are getting trouble free miles under the wheels ??.

20hrs more of light to heavy rain and no leaks...keeping my faith on the fix so far.

I tried heating an aftermarket lens with disastrous results.
Post #19 http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?sho...=359320&hl=

The aftermarket lenses have a clearly visible "wow" in the curvature that I don't see in the OEM lens. I tried heating only the area with the issue with a heat lamp. I obviously did not reach the glass transition temperature of the plastic where it would bend without breaking. When I broke the one piece I had, the experiment ended. I don't know exactly the type of plastic the lens is made from - making it hard to look up what the proper temperature it would need to be at.

I gave up and concentrated on the seals instead of busting expensive, albeit aftermarket parts. I would never experiment like that with an OEM part.

I am glad the seal route has worked for you. Mark at 914rubber ( @Mikey914 ) was looking into better (more pliable/softer) sealing cord for the lenses to help seal the aftermarket lenses. Not sure if he ever had time to explore it.

Sorry you had to break a lens to find this out ,my reasoning for not heating was the shape of it,the seal channels top and bottom make it very strong @ those points,then there is the issue of how hot can you get before it melts ? so its a fine line between it bending or snapping I would think.
Also my thoughts that the lens was out of shape were largely wrong as a check against the RH indicated they were pretty close,thats when I decided to address the seal .
I also removed the housing and cleaned all the dirt and crap off the seal for that part...pretty sure that helped to some extent.

Still no leaks so happy for now,the reversal of the seal isn't a long time fix as it will compress on the lens again and leak,so with that in mind may as well sort it more long term.
Did some research in my country and found the following ;
4mm neoprene cord,
closed cell foam,
skinned finish,
waterproof up to marine standard,
Sounds like it is right for this application but is black and not supplied in white...can't do much about that,reckon it is the same as factory spec ?
Thoughts and idea's welcome,TIA.

Any idea's ??,appears to be same as what 914rubber are listing,think some on here mentioned seal was a poor fit or undersize ?? don't fully remember .TIA.

post #6 above. Here's a pic of the 914R seal I received compared with the original.



Not a good fit at all. The AA seal matches the color, diameter, and durometer much better. Virtually identical to OE.

Thanks Brent ,still playing around with my lights,found the reflector mounting screws on the LH light were missing,replaced them and the lens fits even better,better contact on the "flipped" sealing rubber also.
The originals as shown are not round as I found out first off ,don't think I will fit the foam cord.

The seal cords I got from AA were round but soft so the conform to the gap nicely. I just assumed the originals started out the same and just deformed over the decades of compression.

Got point thanks ,did you notice a differance in softness between the 2 brands ? and what was the diameter of the black cord ? .
Cheers.

I'm sure I did measure but dang if I can find where I recorded the diameters. The black cord was much harder than the original or AA cord. Black cord was more like solid rubber while the others were like medium density foam.

Thats the answer I needed ,the original is pretty soft,I can only assume the skin on the black cord makes it harder as I found a small piece of the same material and that confirmed it.
Supplier got back to me and said they don't have stock and don't intend to make any more as its a very slow seller in that size for them.