Critique my headlight restoration...

[sudsmobile]

My usual approach on ones that are bad like that is 800-1000 grit dry. I then move to 2000 grit and 3000 grit wet. Really work to get the oxidation off as once you get through that all the way, all that will be left is polishing. I have a couple orange hexlogic pads that are older which I retire to plastics like headlights. I start off with a compound then polish and usually have really good success. The only catch I've found that is disappointing is on some lights they are cloudy on the inside which hurts from getting that brand new look.

Similar approach. 1500 grit dry then wet. 3000 wet. Compound with LC 3" orange pad. Polish with LC 3" green pad. Here's a Honda Pilot I did today.

 

[Eldorado2k]

I’d like to thank everyone who replied to this thread.
I feel it’s only right that I return and provide a proper update, so here it is.

This morning I decided to go back for part deux of this headlight restoration. [that’s the nice thing about headlights, they provide you 2 chances at it]
I decided to implement some of the advice you guys provided, here’s what I changed for part deux:

1. I dry sanded with 500 Grit and also with 800 Grit. No more wetsanding for these 1st two sanding steps.

2. I used plain filtered water as lube for the wetsanding [1000 Grit & 3000 Grit] instead of Megs D114@1:128.

3. I changed the kind of pad used for polishing away the sanding marks from a Yellow LC foam cutting pad to a 3” Gray LC Thinpro cutting pad.

4. I did a 2nd polishing step using M205 w/3” White LC Thinpro foam polishing pad.

5. I taped around the headlight to preserve the already chipping paintjob on this beater worktruck. Lol.

-Ok so round 2, here’s what I’m up against.

I wipe the headlight clean with some D114 and dry it. Then straight to dry sanding with a brand new 500 Grit disc on my HFDA speed 5.5. This time around, the dry sanding went through the sanding disc somewhat quickly, but for the most part I was almost able to get by with that 1st disc...

But I wanted to be more thorough, so I grabbed another 500 Grit disc and sanded some more. Lots of stuff was coming off. I made sure to blow the disc clean of dust frequently.

This is after I was done with 2 rounds of sanding with 500 Grit. Making sure to finish off by hand with the provided velcro hand applicator.

I did the same with the 800 Grit. Dry and 2 rounds/2 discs. This is after 800 Grit dry sanding.

Next came 1000 Grit wetsanding. 1st with machine and finished up by hand. I made sure to do a thorough job, I was not rushing through this...

Next up, wetsanding with 3000 Grit. Here’s what it looked like after all the sanding was done.

Time to polish away the sanding marks. McKee’s AIO Headlight Restoring Polish w/Gray Thinpro. Speed 6. I’ve had nothing but stellar results with this polish/pad combo on headlights.

This is the result after 2 applications/buffing cycles with the McKee’s.

At this point I was surprised and a bit disappointed... I still had 1 final step to go with M205 and a white foam polishing pad but I wasn’t too optimistic it would make much of a difference... Here’s the final results after 2 rounds/cycles with M205.

As I expected, the 2nd polishing step with M205 made absolutely no difference.Actually, this whole full guns attack made very little difference compared to the 1st try... Damn!

Here’s how it looks right before I began typing this post..

Hateswirls was right, some headlights are just flat out unpredictable.

Thanks for reading.

 

[Calendyr]

The problem might be inside the headlight. Could be condensation that dried there and made it a bit hazy. If you do all the steps rights, that should be as good as it can be made.

 

[HateSwirls]

The problem might be inside the headlight. Could be condensation that dried there and made it a bit hazy. If you do all the steps rights, that should be as good as it can be made.

Great point.



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[HateSwirls]

I’d like to thank everyone who replied to this thread.
I feel it’s only right that I return and provide a proper update, so here it is.

This morning I decided to go back for part deux of this headlight restoration. [that’s the nice thing about headlights, they provide you 2 chances at it]
I decided to implement some of the advice you guys provided, here’s what I changed for part deux:

1. I dry sanded with 500 Grit and also with 800 Grit. No more wetsanding for these 1st two sanding steps.

2. I used plain filtered water as lube for the wetsanding [1000 Grit & 3000 Grit] instead of Megs D114@1:128.

3. I changed the kind of pad used for polishing away the sanding marks from a Yellow LC foam cutting pad to a 3” Gray LC Thinpro cutting pad.

4. I did a 2nd polishing step using M205 w/3” White LC Thinpro foam polishing pad.

5. I taped around the headlight to preserve the already chipping paintjob on this beater worktruck. Lol.

-Ok so round 2, here’s what I’m up against.

I wipe the headlight clean with some D114 and dry it. Then straight to dry sanding with a brand new 500 Grit disc on my HFDA speed 5.5. This time around, the dry sanding went through the sanding disc somewhat quickly, but for the most part I was almost able to get by with that 1st disc...

But I wanted to be more thorough, so I grabbed another 500 Grit disc and sanded some more. Lots of stuff was coming off. I made sure to blow the disc clean of dust frequently.

This is after I was done with 2 rounds of sanding with 500 Grit. Making sure to finish off by hand with the provided velcro hand applicator.

I did the same with the 800 Grit. Dry and 2 rounds/2 discs. This is after 800 Grit dry sanding.

Next came 1000 Grit wetsanding. 1st with machine and finished up by hand. I made sure to do a thorough job, I was not rushing through this...

Next up, wetsanding with 3000 Grit. Here’s what it looked like after all the sanding was done.

Time to polish away the sanding marks. McKee’s AIO Headlight Restoring Polish w/Gray Thinpro. Speed 6. I’ve had nothing but stellar results with this polish/pad combo on headlights.

This is the result after 2 applications/buffing cycles with the McKee’s.

At this point I was surprised and a bit disappointed... I still had 1 final step to go with M205 and a white foam polishing pad but I wasn’t too optimistic it would make much of a difference... Here’s the final results after 2 rounds/cycles with M205.

As I expected, the 2nd polishing step with M205 made absolutely no difference.Actually, this whole full guns attack made very little difference compared to the 1st try... Damn!

Here’s how it looks right before I began typing this post..

Hateswirls was right, some headlights are just flat out unpredictable.

Thanks for reading.

That's what drives me crazy when working with the lamps.

You can work just as hard as the last set but not so good results but in your case they do look better.

Thanks for sharing

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[RMarkJr]

hey are you all using kits everytime you do this .. or are you finding circle sanding discs to put on a drill or what? I want to do this more and more .. but I dont want to buy a kit every time either .. I have trouble finding sanding discs that will fit on a 3 inch backing plate .. or a 4 inch handheld circle velcro deal. Sand paper strips just seem way to hard to keep flat and even.

 

[Calendyr]

hey are you all using kits everytime you do this .. or are you finding circle sanding discs to put on a drill or what? I want to do this more and more .. but I dont want to buy a kit every time either .. I have trouble finding sanding discs that will fit on a 3 inch backing plate .. or a 4 inch handheld circle velcro deal. Sand paper strips just seem way to hard to keep flat and even.

You can get round sanding disks in the Autogeek store.

Here:
Search

You could also use sandpaper on a block, that would be less expensive I think. These disks cost over 2$ each and you need like 6 of them to do a pair of headlights. It's still less expensive than buying a kit but I think 3M sandpaper sell for about 3$ for 5 sheets. And those sheets are the equivalent of maybe 8 disks in size. Would be more work than doing it by machine but I don't think it would take longer.

 

[sudsmobile]

hey are you all using kits everytime you do this .. or are you finding circle sanding discs to put on a drill or what? I want to do this more and more .. but I dont want to buy a kit every time either .. I have trouble finding sanding discs that will fit on a 3 inch backing plate .. or a 4 inch handheld circle velcro deal. Sand paper strips just seem way to hard to keep flat and even.

Never owned a kit, I buy sheets and sand with a Meguiars foam block cut in half. I keep it flat. I'm not sure there's any real necessity to "keep it flat", you just need to do a thorough job.

Frankly, on most headlights, you can't use a round disc to do the entire lens anyway. You might as well get used to sanding by hand and learn how to do it properly.

 

[Belo]

looks pretty good to me. i'd probably buy new lights if mine were that bad haha

 

[JustJesus]

2nd round looks a bit better, Eldo.

About how long did the 2nd round take?

 

[Eldorado2k]

2nd round looks a bit better, Eldo.

About how long did the 2nd round take?

Thanks.

It took me about 30min. That includes stopping for pics and stuff. If one were to knock it out back to back to back without stopping during the sanding steps it could be done faster.

-Here’s a bit of new info I’ve been able to gather: A co worker of mine owns what I’m guessing is a 2005 Toyota Tundra.. While I was outside just now I noticed his headlights look nearly brand new, so I asked him if he had just recently bought them and he said yea about 3yrs. ago. [pretty impressive for being 3yrs. old]

He told me he had to replace them [@$130 bucks each] because the originals were so hazed up that the lights were noticeably dim at night. He said the toothpaste and other hacks just wouldn’t work anymore...

Anyways when I asked what he thought about the hazing maybe being on the inside of the lenses he said yea, but he said that it’s most likely caused by using cheap replacement bulbs that run too hot and therefore wind up causing that haze to happen on the inside. He said he was told that by the Toyota dealer once he made the decision to buy the legit OEM bulbs instead of the cheapos from Autozone. He said there’s a big difference and you get what you pay for in that instance. He sounded pretty confident about it.

 

[JustJesus]

Interesting info.

When I polished mine, no protection of any kind was used, they went over a year. Maybe closer to two years. They were done late in 2014, and I've been wanting to do them for maybe 6 months. Maybe a little longer.

I bought some Sylvanias, the middle of the road ones, I believe. I didn't do the lowest cost option, that's for sure.

When I finally get to restoring them again, we will see how they turn out. Crossing my fingers here

 

[Calendyr]

Any of you guys sand them with rough sandpaper (400-600 grit) then simply clearcoat them?

I have not tried that yet, because to do a good job you need to remove the headlights from the car and let them dry before re-installing them, and as a mobile guy, that is not practical. But I am curious to know is someone is using that method instead of the 3-4 sanding steps+polishing+coating.

 

[Rrthomas78]

Any of you guys sand them with rough sandpaper (400-600 grit) then simply clearcoat them?

I have not tried that yet, because to do a good job you need to remove the headlights from the car and let them dry before re-installing them, and as a mobile guy, that is not practical. But I am curious to know is someone is using that method instead of the 3-4 sanding steps+polishing+coating.

Clear won't cover that rough of grit..you can start at that but would need to go to at least 1000(maybe 800 but why chance it) for the sand scratches to be filled. Just like on a paint job, panels that receive base coat are generally 400 grit finished and blend panels(clear only) are 1000 grit

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[Calendyr]

Clear won't cover that rough of grit..you can start at that but would need to go to at least 1000(maybe 800 but why chance it) for the sand scratches to be filled. Just like on a paint job, panels that receive base coat are generally 400 grit finished and blend panels(clear only) are 1000 grit

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Hum... are you certain about that? I followed a car painting training and the last sanding before clear was 600 grit, I am pretty sure unless my memory is playing tricks on me. The grit has to be rough enough for the clear to grab to, and 1000 is very very fine. I will have to double check but I am 85% confident that 600 was the final grit for sanding.

ChrisFix had a video out about it, I think I will have to watch it again to see what grit he was using, I believe it was 500 but I may be completelly off, been a really long time since I watched it.

 

[Calendyr]

Ok watching it now, so he is using 400-6000 and 2000 grit. I really doubt 2000 grit will allow the paint to grab to the headlight for long. In the training I took for painting, teacher was clear that sanding too fine would make the paint fail quickly because it cannot grab correctly.

 

[Rrthomas78]

Ok watching it now, so he is using 400-6000 and 2000 grit. I really doubt 2000 grit will allow the paint to grab to the headlight for long. In the training I took for painting, teacher was clear that sanding too fine would make the paint fail quickly because it cannot grab correctly.

I'm sure about it yes! Clear over 600 and you'll have a scratched up shiney headlight

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[Calendyr]

Ok Just finished watching Chris' video. He does it all on the car, but paint takes 24 hours to dry before he can wetsand, so that's a no go for me. I might do it on my own headlights though, just to try. If they fail early, meh, would have cost me a can of clearcoat

 

[Rrthomas78]

Ok Just finished watching Chris' video. He does it all on the car, but paint takes 24 hours to dry before he can wetsand, so that's a no go for me. I might do it on my own headlights though, just to try. If they fail early, meh, would have cost me a can of clearcoat

Go for it. I have 15 years in the paint world so I share what I know and happy to do so, as I'm grateful for all that you guys share about detailing

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[Eldorado2k]

Any of you guys sand them with rough sandpaper (400-600 grit) then simply clearcoat them?

I have not tried that yet, because to do a good job you need to remove the headlights from the car and let them dry before re-installing them, and as a mobile guy, that is not practical. But I am curious to know is someone is using that method instead of the 3-4 sanding steps+polishing+coating.

There’s an easy way to do what you’re describing.. Dries to the touch in 5min. [fully cures in 24hrs] and you don’t even have to remove the headlights.

Just get yourself the Meguiars Perfect Clarity Headlight Restoration Kit.

1st you apply a nickel sized amount of the supplied “cleaning solution”

to the Ultra Fine Scotch Brite Pad that comes in the kit [according to 3M, those Scotch Brite Pads are equal to 600-1000 Grit] and evenly rub/sand the headlight, wipe with a clean microfiber towel, then simply spray the Megs Headlight Coating [you can call it what you want, but IMO it looks & sprays just like clearcoat paint] and you’re done. It really dries in 3-5min. just like it says. Results vary, but on most headlights that aren’t severely hazed it does a pretty good job. Certainly good enough to wow the average Joe..