I just bought a 83 280zx and both of the tail light gaskets were cracked and worn and stuff, and I had to take them off anyway to fix some rust, so I decided to just order new ones from black dragon, when I was trying to put them on, they wouldn't sandwich against the car totally, I compared it to my other zx, and there was a huge gap compared to the one with correct taillights, so what is the correct way to install these things? have any of you cracked your taillights from over tightening the six bolts that hold it on? but please mainly answer the question of how to install them, or please direct me to a fsm page, because I can't find any info on how to install the tail lights in it.

 

The brackets for the taillights are different(79-81;82-83). Make sure you don't have early brackets with later taillights

 

good to know, and they are the correct brackets, I never switched them, and they fit beforehand. thanks for the input

 

I'm subscribing to this thread, since I have a pair of (uncracked) tails in a box and plan to replace mine some day - I have no idea. Some guy sonce told me to take twine and coat in black silicone (like what you'd use to seal up a leaky windshield), and use that as a gasket, but there's got to be a better way.....

good luck!

 

yea, your probably subscribing to the wrong forum then, apparently my taillights were not going on correctly because the gaskets I bought from black dragon were just horrible quality, they were too hard, the taillights wouldn't squeeze to the body close enough so there were gaps where water could get in, luckily I was able to use my old gaskets, so all is good, at least for now.

 

If you go to any PPG dealer or auto paint shop they should carry double sided tape. I think it was made by 3m, the heavy duty kind that you would use to install weather striping. That's what I used on my taillights. It's about 1/8in thick and comes in different widths. I haven't had any problems with water leakage. I put it on the taillights before I reinstalled them, be careful though because that stuff is a pain in the a** to get off of paint or move around once you get it on their.

 

interesting, seems like a good solution