Light Up Rear Panel

I was asked recently if I would 'make' a light up rear SKYLINE panel. The origins of the original light up panels have been lost in time now and fetch quite a high figure within the community. Although they seem reasonably pointless here in the UK as it is illegal to display anything other than a red light on the back of cars here. The original panel was of the clear design and rather cleverly just lit up the letters of skyline in a greenish 'teal' back light.

That isn't what I plan to show you all though, this is UK specific although naturally with a change of some ingredients anything is possible.

Firstly you will need to get hold of a Spec 1 Skyline panel. The irony being that the letters were originally painted silver and the rest of the panel was clear. We now need to turn this on its head and have clear letters and a painted panel. The one that I am using is a badly painted unit that a friend abandoned to my care. More about painting later.

As this is step one, it's reasonably easy. You will need to cut away two sections either side of the central locating lug at the back of the unit.

Note it may be possible to heat the unit and separate it's parts, although personally I have never tried doing this. This step only takes 30 odd minutes anyway.

With trusty drill and hacksaw blade. Not a hammer in sight. 

note this picture is wrong and you will need to go beyond the rubber air vent pipe.

Get your self a small drill and machine gun around the following area. From the central lug all the way along to include just beyond the small air vent. Then with hacksaw blade 'join the dots', naturally you will have to ensure that you got all the bits out of the unit although these usually rinse out okay.

This concludes part one, part two will be painting the letters and lighting.