Smoked or not?

ok so how do you delete threads? lol

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If the backup light is blacked out, it kind of loses the effectiveness of the light don’t ya think? Would like to see it lit up

In my opinion, the only "Good" smoked look that I actually enjoyed was one where a user pulled the lens off the light and smoked it from the inside. It was super subtle but made a world of difference with the look and barely changed the light output. Throw in some brighter LED's and no loss what-so-ever in terms of effective light output for backing up. I wouldn't touch the brake lights.. to important in such a small car. Need all the help we can get to prevent a 3ton truck or larger from taking us out.

Here is the thing about the smoked look. Its way overplayed and makes it look like you did it. It also makes the car look old dull and faded. Same thing with going badge less as a style as it looks like the car was so old the badges fell off. 

 Dont get me wrong we all have different philosophies on how we want to build a car but I have found if you want people to admire your ride there is nothing greater than making the car look like you didn't do it and it came like that from the factory.  Its a very hard thing to pull off but if you can and the car looks  bright and shiny to match,  it will get so much attention that it ends up being a distraction.  

Posted by: Patrick Lipp

In my opinion, the only "Good" smoked look that I actually enjoyed was one where a user pulled the lens off the light and smoked it from the inside. It was super subtle but made a world of difference with the look and barely changed the light output. Throw in some brighter LED's and no loss what-so-ever in terms of effective light output for backing up. I wouldn't touch the brake lights.. to important in such a small car. Need all the help we can get to prevent a 3ton truck or larger from taking us out.

This isn't correct. Spraying the inside means killing the optics. Compensating with a brighter bulb won't help. If your bulb is 2x as bright as stock, but you don't have optics to focus the light, you're still getting substantially worse output than stock. Yes, even turn signals and reverse lights have optics and beam patterns. Especially turn signals. 

I'm not saying don't do it, but just wanted to clear up a misconception.

I say do it from the inside and get that 2nd gen jdm look. You should use smoke translucent paint like the Tamiya cans otherwise it will "black out" the reflector.

I like the clear. But my car is light in color.  Decreasing the light output seems counterintuitive for a car that is already tougher to navigate in reverse