Tail Lights and Rubbing Alcohol
 

Recently, I had some trouble with my tail lights getting condensation in them. So I dried them out with a blow dryer and all was well, except a few water spots in them. Now, this isn't a big deal, but I am a perfectionist. I wanted them clean! I was too busy to do a little searching on what to use, as I was in a hurry to get back to school.

Now, this is where the whole experience went wrong. And I am putting this here to put a blatant warning on using rubbing alcohol to clean out your tail lights. DO NOT, under any circumstance, use rubbing alcohol to clean your tail lights!

I swished the alcohol around to remove the water spots, and then left them to dry while I ate lunch. After I got done, I came back to very large cracks running across both of my tail lights! My tail lights did not just haze, as I found out was common when using alcohol, after searching. My tail lights exploded. So take this as a warning!

Learn from my stupidity!

Ouch!

didn't Mazda had a TSB saying don't use Alcohol to clean the lights ... :(

lucky u can probably find a used light at junk yard for cheap.

I'm in the market for new tail lights now. Just shopping around a little bit. This all stems from my stupidity of not searching before doing. Live and learn.

I have one more picture that shows how bad it is more effectively, but it is too large and I am too depressed to do the work. haha

lol ! well, just call around I'm pretty sure some junk yard will have what you're looking for.

I recall a thread about using alcohol to clean the dried up water spots inside the tail lights. I was planning to clean it with alcohol someday, but when i saw this thread, i said "holy sh*#"! I didn't know alcohol could do this thing...wow!

Why on earth would you ever think rubbing alcohol wound help?

Why wouldn't it help? Alcohol will remove the water residue and then it evaporates quickly enough and has such a low viscosity it won't leave any residue of it's own.

^^ That was the theory at least.

RO water FTW.

distilled water does the trick too

Wow!

Was it next to a heat source or something? It's hard to believe they cracked just like that. I only thought skin cracked when dried with rubbing alcohol. :)

This is complete news to me.

I cleaned out the inside of my headlamp lenses with rubbing alcohol and had no issues except for stripping off, what I'm guessing is, the anti-fog coating inside (the haze).

So yeah, I just trashed a tail light this way and cannot get the "haze" off the inside - looks terrible!! Yes I know... serious dumb ass tax for not checking what to use to clean the water spots out.

I called a couple of local u-pull its and apparently there is two different tail lamps for the 05 rx8. Silver background with red or chrome background with red. Rockauto has two different lamps too, as does Mazda. Mazda told me I needed the FE0151160J part number for my vin. Anyone have an idea what is the difference between the lamps are because all the pictures of the different lamps look exactly the same to me? Is it look or fit??

LoL... I found the answered to my question in case anyone is wondering; FE0151160J is the older tail lamp (with the bulbs), FE0151180L is the newer tail lamp (without the bulbs) but looks the same. This is the chrome lens and with sports suspension package.

I ran in to the same experience with regards to the cracking when using alcohol...

At first I wanted to simply dry the moisture out of my tail lights, using the extra low heat level of my drier and the no-spin shelf that's used to dry shoes. That didn't work out too well as so much dirt had infiltrated the light that it left a heavy film behind on the lens; it also took forever to dry up any remaining moisture, even after running it for 2-1/2 hours straight.

So I thought to use the alcohol trick using the remaining few ounces from a bottle of Ethyl alcohol. Worked the charm in rinsing out most of the crud, but head slap, I dried it with the lens facing down resulting again in a film where the last of it had pooled. It was crystal clear everywhere else so it seemed promising as a basic approach. (I wasn't expecting the film as I had thought most of the crud would've been eliminated when I drained away the bulk of the alcohol.)

So I picked up a bottle of Isopropyl and rinsed the tail light once more with about 4 oz. Seemed to perform exactly the same as with the Ethyl, so after draining the bulk of it I put it back in the drier, this time lens facing up.

10 minutes later I checked on it only to find an extensive web-like crazing pattern develop over most of the lens, so bad in fact that I'm not sure which is worse, the crazing that occurred or the original condensation.

This seems to indicate that Isopropyl may be the culprit as the Ethyl alcohol I used earlier did not cause a similar problem. That being said the crazing pattern that developed was an extension of some mild pre-existing cracks I had on the lens from before the intervention, though it got much, much worse after rinsing with and drying out the Isopropyl, whereas no such (new) crazing was evident with the Ethyl.

Live and learn... Now hoping to now score a decent price on some Rx-8 tail lights!

Alcohol causing problems in the tail lights is true, at least for me when I tried to clear out some condensation the other day.

I had first rinsed it out with about 2 oz. of Ethyl Alcohol, which seemed to work really well and cleared up the lens of a lot of built-up grime, but what little of the alcohol I couldn't drain out left a film on the lens where it had last dried up but otherwise looked perfect.

But that was the last of the alcohol so I picked up a bottle of Isopropyl Alcohol and re-rinsed the tail light with about 4 oz, draining as much of it out as I can before drying it lens-side up to avoid any possible residue. When I checked upon it later it had crazed like crazy all over the lens.

Truth be told I dried it in the clothes drier using the shoe-drying rack and the extra-low heat setting, but I did that both times, once with the Ethyl and once with the Isopropyl, and only had the issue with the Isopropyl.

So for whatever it's worth I had the crazing issue too, but only when using Isopropyl alcohol. Another observation - the crazing that occurred seemed only to occur as an extension to some existing cracks I already had in the lens, though what I had before was at best superficial and became much, much more pronounced and extensive only after the treatment with the Isopropyl.

time and sunlight help remove the water. See my thread on the S2 taillight condensation fix (run a search). remove the connections in the back to facilitate moisture release.

Alcohol also allows delamination of the mirroring in the lens and any epoxy/liquid gasket material that was used internal to the lens.

I had the same idea that water would evaporate as a result of the alcohol.. and well
the tail light looked so much better with water in it ...