Reply to "tail lights"

Tail light and side marker reflectors are vapor-deposited aluminum and the coating is only a few atoms thick, so polishing makes things worse. Some owners have laboriously laid in strips of chrome tape, others have used 'chrome' paint. Some have decent results but IMHO never as good as the OEMs had 40+ years ago.

I've thought about building a rig to do this: the concept is simple. You put the meticulously cleaned housing in a vacuum chamber facing up and rig a piece of thin aluminum welding wire with outside connections. Pump down the vacuum chamber and dead-short the wire connections to a 230V 50 amp dryer plug! The wire explodes from the overload and aluminum vapor is deposited on the entire chamber and everything inside. This is approximately how your originals were made shiny. The mass of the wire is important since there will be an even layer left on the entire chamber; the alloy should be 1100 series- dead-soft nearly pure aluminum.

The other option is brand new buckets. This is one reason I bought new GR-4 tail light assemblies for our car...