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The Ugly
Once upon an early June morning I was going with my family to a Coffee & Cars event on I-90. That time we decided to visit Worcester, a town we hadn't been to before, to spend some time walking downtown after the event. I also invited @sjxc to join us and we agreed to meet at the rest area on the highway to arrive to the event together. It was almost 7:00 AM, and I was driving strictly according to the driving rules in the 3rd lane from the left, when suddenly...
On the almost empty highway, some ...sshole in his old Chevy Silverado from the early '90s hit my rear bumper on the left at approximately 50 mph, and then just floored the pedal to run away. After a short emergency stop, I found out that my DVR had a disconnected power cable. Looks like during the previous day's car wash, when I cleaned the windshield from the inside I accidentally disconnected it. This was my first-ever accident ever in the US since my move here, and the first time in my 15 years of driving experience, and, of course, nobody from our family memorized the plate number of that pickup.
Taking all of this into account, and with the absence of any visual indications of the issues on the dashboard, I decided to continue driving and meet with @sjxc at the agreed spot. Then decide if we still wanted to go to the Coffee & Cars event in Worcester.
During the meet with @sjxc we cleaned up the damage spot with his magic wipe and examined the level of damage:
Not something I should go crazy and sell the car immediately over, but still nothing fun. To be honest capturing this on camera was a bit difficult.
The Coffee & Cars event is over, and now I need to decide how I want to restore the car. What do you mean "how"? How it was before! Well, not exactly. The thing is, being a car enthusiast, every non-critical damage to your car is just another reason for an upgrade. And I already committed to the rear bumper upgrade, so I just need to fix the quarter panel and the tail light. But first, I removed the tail light to examine the damage closely.
The first obvious thing I did was show this damage to a body shop which is going to work on my upgraded rear bumper. They quoted me $800 just for the rear quarter restoration, and let me know that they need to blend the paint through the body almost up to the front door. Are you for real? For that kind of damage? It's really like 5 cm in length and 3 mm in width.
Obviously I took a break to think about it. Simply because I want to keep the body paint original as much as possible. But if you blend the quarter panel "up to the front doors" it's going to be noticeable with the paint thickness meter. Thankfully there is another way to go. I already had a touch-up paint sample after side skirts upgrade and looked for a highly skilled PDR specialist.
Unfortunately, the only PDR specialist who decided to help me in the whole greater Boston area. Everyone else was sending me to a body shop for the full repaint. That's interesting when back in Ukraine PDR is one of the most popular services on the market, here in Boston people are ready to spray half of your car and forget about it.
Anyway, the restoration price ended up at $520. The PDR restored the quarter panel up to 60-70% I'd say. It's definitely way better than it was, but there's still room for improvement. For example, there's still a small bend on the quarter panel, and a small misalignment between the bumper and the quarter panel. Maybe when I go to New York next time, I'll visit some high quality PDR services to fix that. I already targeted a couple who have active Instagram accounts. In any case now it looks almost as it was before. Most people don't even notice anything if I don't let them know where to look.
The Bad
Next I had to decide what to do with the left outer tail light. Of course I could purchase a used one on eBay in mint condition and forget about it. The price is less than $200, but that's not the way a true Alfa owner goes. An Alfa Romeo owner should suffer. Therefore I decided to go with a clear tail lights upgrade. Either way, I'll spend those $200 on a tail light, so I'd better invest them in a clear tail lights upgrade set.
As you may heard, the only difference between red and clear tail lights is the color of the glass. And I found the clear glass itself available on AliExpress, so that it is possible to just replace it on my existing set (and restore the damaged one). However, the price for the set of 4 pieces of glass is almost half of the price I targeted for this upgrade. Additionally I don't know how much the replacement will cost. Probably rest of my budget.
And then, I came to this forum with a question of who was ready to sell the set of clear tail lights for ~$800. That's the fair price for it. Fortunately I found @_nickwhit, who agreed on this price, so we started discussing the shipping options, when he... Just stopped responding.
A couple of days after I tried to reach him, I received a response that he had already sold this set locally. Interesting. Like I said, the Alfa owner should suffer. "You can't be a true petrolhead until you" chase a minor part for your Alfa Romeo. My level of frustration kept growing. Two days later I started browsing eBay for used clear tail lights. And this is a rare bird to be honest.
My goal was to purchase a US-spec set (SAE specification). The thing is that when you install EU-spec (ECE specification) tail lights, you have to change the BCM configuration and do the PROXI alignment. Not a big deal, however, you'll lose the rear side markers, simply because EU lights don't have them embedded. Meaning that there could be issues passing the annual inspection. I know that many auto services don't even notice the absence of the side markers, but I wanted to be 100% compliant. Just in case.
The next problem was that I didn't find the whole set of tail lights available on eBay. Only separate ones were available from different sellers. I had to purchase them one by one. Then let's create the list of what I need. The part numbers of SAE (US-spec) tail lights are:
During the Coffee & Cars event, I discussed with @sjxc the idea of upgrading to clear tail lights, and we both were not sure which ones were better. Therefore I decided to start by purchasing the left outer tail light to replace the broken one I have, see how it looks like, and then decide which one I prefer.
Additionally, it is possible to negotiate on eBay, so I decided to message the first seller who had the outer left tail light available. And, we negotiated the price to $159 (shipping included). Good deal. After receiving the tail light I installed it for comparison, and...
The Good
The whole family agreed that this looks way better than the red ones. Clear tail lights look way more modern. Now, when I have one left outer tail light, there are three others to buy. It's worth saying that the prices for the different tail lights are random. The next seller I negotiated with for the rear right outer tail light agreed to sell it to me for $234 (shipping included) total. It's not as good as what I paid for the left one, but the average price for left and right together is still OK. Maybe I can save some money on the ones installed on the trunk lid? Maybe, but...
At the time I was looking for inner tail lights on eBay from US sellers, there were absolutely none available. I started thinking I'm stuck with the outers only. But my brain asked me to do some research.
As you remember, the outer tail lights, which are installed in the quarter panels, have different part numbers between US (SAE spec) and EU (ECE spec) markets. But nowhere could I find the ones installed on the trunk lid. Only for EU:
I don't claim the US ones don't exist at all, but I was not able to find them. Then I decided to compare the pictures of the connectors on the back of EU and US red tail lights. And the thing is, both versions of the tail lights have the same pin-out schema. They both have a 6-pin connector with the following wires:
Additionally, the wattage description on the back of the lights is the same:
This all seemed to me to indicate that the circuit boards inside those lights are absolutely the same and don't have any specific logic difference between markets. And remember, the only difference between red and clear tail lights is the color of the glass. So I assumed the same connector pin-out and wattage apply to clear tail lights as well.
But what does this give you? You still have no inner tail lights available for purchase in the US. Neither US, nor EU spec. Do you want to risk and purchase from Europe? But what if it doesn't work? You'll lose on the return. Or imagine how difficult it would be to sell a single EU-spec tail light in the US? And all of these questions are valid.
When suddenly I found one seller in the US from Florida who sold an EU-spec right inner tail light (ECE specification) from US-spec Giulia Quadrifoglio. What? A US-spec car with EU tail lights? The tail light production date was 19/07/2021. Luckily, the donor car VIN code was specified in the ad: ZARFAEAV7J7565147. Using this VIN, I found this car was sold on Copart.
But, wait? This is a 2018 Giulia Quadrifoglio. But the sticker on the tail light in the ad claimed this tail light was produced in 2021. This car couldn't have had the tail lights from 2021 during production. Does it mean this guy, who drove this 2018 did the upgrade to EU spec tail lights, or... are EU inner tail lights compatible with US-spec cars? The seller had return option, so there was only one way to find out...
So we negotiated the final price to $186 (shipping included) with the seller and I placed the order. Now the moment of truth. Will the EU-spec inner tail lights work with the US-spec outers? And the answer is... Yes!
There is absolutely no difference between EU and US-spec inner tail lights, the ones installed on the trunk lid. All the market specifics (cornering lights, markers, etc.) are in the ones on the quarter panels. No coding needed!
This gave me the option to get the last left inner tail light from abroad (the UK). Once I received the tail light, I was able to confirm for the second time, the ECE and SAE-spec inner tail lights are compatible.
Now it's time to do the final calculations:
The total price for the whole set of clear tail lights is $809 (shipping included).
All the tail lights are in mint or near-perfect condition. Not new, but I didn't noticed any signs of heavy wear, cracks or anything like that. As of now, after 2 months of usage I didn't noticed any condensation inside. Maybe I'm lucky, of course, but not 4 times in a row. After all, I'm glad that I did this upgrade and didn't gave up in the middle. In conclusion - if you still think about whether it's worth upgrading your red tail lights to the clear ones - DO IT! It's definitely worth it!
Wait, wait, wait... You said you also committed to the rear bumper upgrade, but the photos show the old bumper. Well... That's the next chapter of our story. Thanks for reading this. Stay tuned and love your cars!
