When I bought my corvette last year the original owner had smoked the marker lights, tail lights, fog lights and backup lights with a spray on tint. The tail lights and marker lights are not too bad, but to make the clear lenses dark he applied a good .010 of tint to them. This makes the light housings look like they are full of used motor oil when the lamps are on, and renders them completely useless.

I debated what I could do to make them work correctly and retain the blacked out look. A few weeks ago walking through a home improvement store I found what was called expanded mesh which is used for security type screen doors. It came in a 4'x8' sheet, is powder coated black and around .020 thick for $24.00.

I removed the fog lights and sanded the tint off with 320 on a DA, then began fitting the expanded mesh to the light housing. Keeping the mesh pattern parallel to the edges of the light made forming it much easier. After I got it formed to the housing I hit the lens with 500, 800, 1000 and then some mirror glaze.

I purchased some HID 55watt 4500K H10 units from DDM Tuning, I have a set of these in my truck as well as a set in Tania's car. I mounted the transformers to the top of the fog lamp housings.

This picture shows the mesh covered lens on the passenger side and the tinted one on the drivers side.

This is with both lights completed.

A view of what the mesh looks like installed. At all angles but head on it still has the blacked out appearance.

Because this took a lot less time than I thought it would I decided to try the expanded mesh on the fender vents as well. I am very happy with the outcome for a total of $75.00 + tax. There are companies that make lens covers and vent covers out of heavy gauge wire mesh that are very nice and very expensive, over $150.00 for each set. When I have some more time I plan to do the back up lights and something around the exhaust to tie it together.