Thread: Help with exterior of 2005 GT

I would recommend meguiar's ultimate line up of ultimate compund, ultimate polish and ultimate wax. It's available at your local store and it's great combination. You can also polish and wax the wheels with it. You would need to have the wheel refinished if you want to fix them. You could try to use a compound on the rear reverse light panel to see if it can bring some life back into it. If not it would need to be sanded. I would leave the grille as is or paint it gloss black. Or even find some SPO's.

These are SPO's

Stick with factory headlights unless you plan on doing retrofits. I have halo headlights and they suck. LED taillights are good. I have a set and like them a lot. You can tint you factory tails with VHT night shades, there are write-ups on here on how to do this.

Here are a couple shots of my tails and head lights....

^^^ What taillights are those? How long have you had them and how have they held up so far?

You have a PM. I don't want to clog up the thread.

I would agree with the comments on replacing your headlights. My GP's headlights were not in great shape when I bought it last year. Mostly just the tops of the headlights. A couple of weeks ago I spend a few hours wetsanding and polishing them. They weren't perfect, but much improved. I put a polymer sealant on them (not nec designed for headlights, but I thought it would help anyway). Not 2 weeks later they looked almost as bad as before. I think replacing them and taking care of them is the best route. I have been going back and forth between paying extra for OEM or not. In my experience OEM headlights hold up better / longer, but the top of the GP headlights get bad so quick I am not sure if that is really the case or if I should save the $$$ and replace them more often.

Originally Posted by pmsmith2032

Thanks average joe! How much did your lights cost and where did you order them from?

They were on the car when we bought it. I believe they came from eBay though.

If you mean the chrome reflector yes I've done it and others have done it as well. You can't paint them though unless you retrofit some projectors into them. Running standard halogens or hids the chrome is what reflects the light.

Originally Posted by pmsmith2032

Thanks. Any products that I can use to restore the dark black color of the gasket around the sun roof?

Give meguiar's ultimate black a shot on the exterior trim. You can pick it up at your local auto parts store. You also want to make sure the trim is clean so it adhere's to the trim and not run. Also apply it thin.

Originally Posted by pmsmith2032

Thanks average joe! How much did your lights cost and where did you order them from?

You can get them on ebay or amazon. Do a search for grand prix LED. The red one's look the best in my opinion.

Originally Posted by pmsmith2032

Thanks. Has anyone seen/tried painting the back of the headlight black? I thought I saw another post about this, but I can't seem to locate it.

Originally Posted by REDCOMPG

If you mean the chrome reflector yes I've done it and others have done it as well. You can't paint them though unless you retrofit some projectors into them. Running standard halogens or hids the chrome is what reflects the light.

As redcompg stated they are only painted when doing a retro with projectors. You don't want to paint them with halogens unless you don't want to see at night. Stick with factory lights unless you plan to retro projectors. With stock lights look into HIR headlights. They are still halogen type bulbs but with better light output.

If you want some cheap mods I would check out Vehicle Graphics - Pontiac - Grand Prix 2004-2008 - ReflectiveConcepts.com They got some sweet graphics that will set your car apart from all the thousands of grand prix

Looks great cleaned up. Good to see you got good results with meg's ultimate wax.

To answer your questions.
1. You can leave the engine cover off. It's primarily for looks. You can also remove the insulation if you want. It's there for noise absorption and in case of a fire. I didn't notice any difference in noise after I got my aftermarket hood.

2. Halogens is what is stock on the car so you know what kind of light output you are getting.

Projectors are what you see on modern cars today. The focus the beam and project it farther down the road. They typically use high intensity discharge bulbs aka HIDs which are brighter. The aftermarket assemblies that was posted on here and that you see on ebay are halogen projectors. HIDs can be placed into them but the light output on these is not as good as the stock lights with halogens. The other option is to retrofit a projector into the stock headlamp assmeblies to give you the benefits of a proper projector set up. There are plenty of write ups hroughout the forum on how to do it. HIDs can be placed in stock assemblies but the light scatters and it will blind oncoming traffic.

LEDs are typically used for your sidemarker lights or even tailights. Although there is a set of aftermarket LED tailights that you see in the pics posted above. They are typically brighter than stock tails with halogens. There are LEDs that can be used in the stock tails. Diode dynamics is a vendor here and has more information on that.

One option that 04+ grand prix's have is that they can utilize an HIR bulb. This will give you good output and sticking with stock assemblies. This link will provide good info HIR Headlights 9011 9012 bulbs

I would get the windows tinted as one of the first mods. A pro tint job will really set your car off right.