My atempt at cleaning the headlights..
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TECH Resident
Joined: Nov 2002
Posts: 963
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From: AustinTexas
My atempt at cleaning the headlights.. I took my drivers side headlight out today and started to wet sand it with 320 grit sandpaper. After a while I realized it wasn't working to well so I switched to a 220 grit and continued. It had some minor scratches on it so I used the "Novus" 3 step polishing kit that my girlfreind gave me to get them out. I did all of that and still, my headlights are just a little better than what they were. Should I try sanding longer? With the same 220 and 320 or should i try something with a lower grit??? Any tips appricitaed. Thanx alot.
-Brent
-Brent
On The Tree
Joined: Aug 2004
Posts: 139
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From: greenwood ,in
FOURSTAR products in sarasota fl. has a kit that works very well for this kind of thing. Don't know the phone # but the web site should be www.fourstarproducts.com
The sandpaper you are using is way too coarse. It is probably leaving more damage behind than what you started out with. You want to use the finest grit sandpaper necessary to remove the damage (1500 grit is finer than 800 grit), then work your way up in grit from there. The goal is to remove as little material from the headlight lens as possible, just enough to remove the damage, then work your way up to something like a 2,000 grit sandpaper as the final sanding step. That will leave the surface of the lens lightly hazy, but smooth enough that the Novus polish will be able to remove the haze.
Check out THIS THREAD for the full write-up on when I did my headlights. Keep in mind though, that I had to use a very coarse sandpaper to remove all of the small cracks and yellowing that was present in my headlights. Even then, the roughest stuff that I used was 400 and I only used it for a very short time before I realized it was too coarse. I switched to the 800 grit and sanded with it for a long time to remove the scratches caused by the 400 grit plus the remains of the cracks/yellowing. Here's how it turned out:
Before:
After:
Check out THIS THREAD for the full write-up on when I did my headlights. Keep in mind though, that I had to use a very coarse sandpaper to remove all of the small cracks and yellowing that was present in my headlights. Even then, the roughest stuff that I used was 400 and I only used it for a very short time before I realized it was too coarse. I switched to the 800 grit and sanded with it for a long time to remove the scratches caused by the 400 grit plus the remains of the cracks/yellowing. Here's how it turned out:
Before:
After:
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If you lights aren't in real bad shape, try using some Mother's Mag & Aluminum polish on them. It works great on the yellow oxidization, but won't help much with the spiderweb cracks.