Restoring car headlights

[jordan1]

Looking to clean up daughters headlights and came across this, thought you guys may be interested.

 

[armalites]

I've seen one of their vids before I think she is 50+, if you've got it flaunt it

 

[pedrobedro]

Farm girl, she's handy with a chainsaw as well

 

[Westfield-builder]

was there a car in that video ????

 

[slim_boy_fat]

Here are before and afters from when I did mine.

Before:



and after:



Quite easy to do, once you pluck up the courage to take wet and dry to them...........

 

[mechman]

I've heard toothpaste works as well .

 

[Exuptoy]

Oh yeah, you keep working it baby!........

 

[doubleboost]

She is not hard to look at

 

[the snooper]

you can buy the proper stuff for plastic but its more or less the same as g3 which works well

 

[Exuptoy]

She is not hard to look at

Wait till you've seen the other videos. You will be, sorry couldn't resist!

 

[colnerov]

was there a car in that video ????

Yes, you need to look past the headlights.

 

[Mee]

you can buy the proper stuff for plastic but its more or less the same as g3 which works well

I use G3 and G10 and never forget to seal the freshly cut plastic with polish or similar to protect them or they fade out again in no time.

 

[james butler]

optical wipes for glasses are great for cleaning the milky film that appears in glass lens headlights.
poke them through the hole the bulb goes through and push it around the inside of the glass with something soft and then pull back out through the hole with tweezers.
really does make a difference and doesn't leave streaks.
doesn't work on plastic though

 

[grahamkendall]

As slim boy fats post. I have the previous generation e39 BMW and did the headlights on that. Simply wet and dry with 2500/3000 grit paper. Don't be afraid to go at it. And then i used a rotary polishing machine with a wool mop on it with some marine polishing compound, (Farcella G3) or T cut will also work. and refine to a good finish. All in it took about 40 mins and both came out good as new

 

[pedrobedro]

Lacquer them after they are cleaned up if you are keeping the vehicle and want a permanent job.

 

[Parm]

http://www.meguiars.co.uk/shop/two-step-headlight-restoration-kit

Used the kit above to polish out the headlights on the neighbours MR2. Once we overcame the "who had the most bottle to take an electric polisher to the plastic headlight" issue, it worked very well and they came up as good as new. Just used 40mm wide insulation tape to mask off the body work as neither of us were experienced in the use of the polisher.

We were both involved as it was his car and my polisher

 

[123hotchef]

I borrowed some 3 m cutting compound for mine after the wet and dry paper I worked my way down the 3 stages

 

[zx9]

Lacquer them after they are cleaned up if you are keeping the vehicle and want a permanent job.

What laquer can you use? Last time I had the front end off the A4 I wet sanded and polished the headlights whilst they were off the car but did not laquer them for fear of melting the plastic.

 

[123hotchef]

Yes I might want to lacquer mine too that have gone cloudy again in only er well 4 years probably