New to these boards, just bought an 05 Blue RX8 and had to deal with the unfortunate tail light leak. So after reading on here on how to solve the problem (Drill two holes and Black RTV/Silicone) I decided to go to Autozone and buy a roll of gasket material made out of rubber and cellulose and a small tube of Black RTV. http://www.autozone.com/autozone/cat...ndName=Fel-Pro

Check out the link and see if they have it in stock but it's $5.99 for the roll.

All I did was took the crappy gasket that Mazda put on the taillight, traced it onto the sheet and was able to get 6 gaskets out of it. I used an exacto knife but the gasket sheet was pretty thick so I ended up using a boxcutter. Once the "new" gaskets were cut out, I put Black RTV on the inside of the old gasket so it would seal against the tail light. The next part is up to you, you put however many gaskets ontop of the old gasket to prevent any water leaking into the light. I was tired of taking them off and blow drying them several times. I put three on each and its been raining the last 4 days and so far no leakage!

Thought I would share my solution to help out others with this problem!

 

Just FYI Mazda does have a revised gasket which fixes the problem.

More expensive than your solution obviously But less work.

No need to drill holes in the lights if you have a good gasket though.

 

Yeah Mazda wanted $42.99 each since I am 7,000 miles out of the warrenty was disappointed but eh what can you do?

 

Nice, cheap alternative to the pricey Mazda parts. Nice. No more excuses for drilling your taillights! You know who you are!

 

I couldnt find anything exactly like that "RTV" would this work?
http://media.tractorsupply.com/is-vi...initialFrame=0

 

That gasket is bullshit, it's no better than the "updated" visor. I had two new gaskets and new tail lights still leak after being replaced under warranty, did the RTV fix over a year ago and no more leakage.


I wouldn't use that but it will probably work. Black silicone or red RTV silicone can be had at any autoparts store or walmart. Just cover the lines of the OEM gasket with a thick bead of it and you will be fine. I think where you live plays a part in this issue.

 

I prefer the do it yourself job. It seems to work better.

 

This is exactly like the what I did the first week I owned my 8. I went to a local arts and crafts shop and bought a sheet of rubber for $1.99. Traced my leaking gaskets, cut them out and added RTV. They've been leak free for a couple months now and I have extra money in my wallet. Win-win

 

^ can you describe in detail what type of "rubber" you bought and made a gasket out of?

 

For the record, you can just use the existing gasket if you are going to use rtv, rtv expands when cure so it will completely seals it

 

I took the tail light off, drilled two holes in the bottom, reinstalled the light and never had a problem again. That was about a year and a half ago. Took 3 minutes.

 

I did the same with tracing a new gasket on a piece of gasket material and applied some RTV silicone to keep it sticking. So far so good :D I did the drill fix too, but the humidity here is so bad, it starts to condensate overnight. So now I closed that hole with silicone.

 

I noticed some condensation on my driver-side tail light yesterday.

Read the DIY, removed and dried out tail light, cleaned the foam gasket, applied a thick line of permatex red RTV silicon on both sides of the gasket and re-installed everything. I let it set for a little over an hour.

Drove around for a bit, then parked it, and after a few mins or so, I notice the dreaded condensation forming in the light again, FFS!

 

Some thing I learned with my old cj7, is that only the black rtv works like the package says it will. My passenger tail light is doing this so I will give it a whirl.

 

Update.

There must of been some moisture left in the tail light when I placed it back in (which is why the condensation had returned). So what I did was parked the car with the tail lights facing the sun the next day, and removed the parking brake light to air out the condensation for about 8 hours. I also drove around for a bit (the brake lights heat up the assembly and will evaporate any moisture in the tail light). Placed the brake light back in at night.

It's been a week now, and no more condensation.

 

Sun? In March? This Oregonian does not believe such a thing is possible.

 

Only for a few days last weekend