What is a few meters of chrome all about?

MarkA , the few metres of chrome is as said for bumpers , mine are fglass so need to cover with a wrap and if I stuff up, there's more to try again

So on to today's epic story , while restoring the taillights. I had a monster fail but first I'll run thru what I did to restore them. As people know work these lights is the black seal shrinks and starts becoming a water trap. First job after painting the housings silver was to clean the lens and seal foam . I didn't take pics as time was running out but I simply held the rubber seal over the heat gun to soften the rubber and stretched till it cooled and done that a few times to get memory back in it for glueing back on the housing work contact adhesive. The foam seal was beyond it's sell by date so I made new ones from a sheet of high density foam and glued in position. This is them all assembled


Passenger side went in without drama after cleaning the nuts n bolts

And now the fail part,

this is a spare set I have and this is what happened, while installing the driver side the threaded rod part decided to snap inside the cast ally, easy, I'll drill and tap bigger, that didn't work so I sat back and thinked how to fix it with minimal interference to nearby parts.
I came up with grinding the whole thread boss away and making a new part from metal and bolt it in, I also Sika between the parts and welded the threaded rod to the plate which was bead rolled and some minor tweaks it was ready to bolt up once the holes drilled in the housing then tapped threads for M5 bolts.

Because I went with 6mm thread from 4mm(imperial equivalent) the outer clamp needed slightly modifying so welded a crush tube of correct size

Screwed the replacement thread on with stainless button heads , it's prolly easy over engineered but it ain't going to fail again..

Mounted on the car

Inside it's not that bad

Over engineered is an understatement old boy!
But like you said, its there for good now.
 
The chrome wrap. Is it self adhesive?
 
Marty, with the foam, there are lots of options I'm sure your aware of. The closed cell types which don't absorb moisture, single sided/double sided etc. When Clarke rubber were local to me they had a good selection. Not sure with them now? 
 

Errr, I'm hoping the foam is water tight and with it being compressed it should be at least half proof, it'll be something to check after it's first wash amongst many other water check zones.

Yes the vinyl wrap has self sticky and can be used with water or dry whole using a heat gun

Yesterday a parcel came in with the heater control face replacement. The decal I got is for RS models which unknown to myself it's sort of back to front and up side down but anyway it stick down nice and looks spot on.
Wasn't sure whether the old sticker should've been removed but did and think it's not the right was although it still lights up fine


I did flip the panel over and also the switch so it's closer to the driver after this pic only cause space behind the panel is tight I was hunting for more clearance for vent tubes

that face plate sticker must be from the same chinese factory as mine.
Despite being meant for RHD, mine was mirrored alos, and the van was meant to be blue/cool on passenger side, with red then off on drivers, and mine had up and down switched. In other words, totally wrong!.
In the end, I used the original one again. 
Another crap repro.

So we stuffed up and bought RS version instead of the povvo pack, Chinese made in UK..
https://ebay.us/m/rYY9v1

But should've actually bought this one
https://ebay.us/m/Z1tbNq

well done Sherlock.
His Ebay listing had 5 views in the past hour.
I wonder how many were us!

Guilty!
I actually went to look at mine and by golly, your correct

I want to freshen up mine too so good info right there. The back of the car looks great Marty and the light mods are A tier.