Headlight heavy manual restoration

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Ganzolo

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Hi all,

My car is all the time outside and its headlights are completely worn out by the sun. See on the picture bellow the completely worn out top of the light.

View attachment 63504

I decided to wet sand them and use plastX to restore them. Note that I am probably using first version of plastX, the liquid is white and not slightly blue like on internet videos.

So I did #400, #600, #800, #1000, #2000, #3000 spending around 40 minutes on each lights wet sanding them. Then things became complicated when it comes to plastX, I used this product during more than 1h on each light. I am rubbing it with high quality microfiber towel. I used so far around 100ml of PlastX! Usually I rub it until it got completely absorbed by the plastic and then add more product. Results are better and better but it looks like to remove a slight haze I need to rub 30 minutes. Note: Once finishing polish, I am planning to clear coat them with ceramic coating.


After heavily rubbing plastX for 5 minutes. You can clearly see some haze still there:

View attachment 63505


After heavily rubbing plastX for around 30 more minutes. Much better:

View attachment 63506

Also despite this heavy restoration, so far I did not manage to remove dots marks. Sorry for picture orientation but you can see some dots there.
View attachment 63509



Right now I am not satisfied with result, it looks like there is still a little haze on them. It's very hard to see but I have the chance to have the same car in my hood to compare. You can see transparency is much higher and reflection is much sharper.

My car after the whole process:
View attachment 63507

Same car in my hood:
View attachment 63508


What am I doing wrong? Should I continue using plastX for one more hour? Should I start process again using only #3000 wet sanding?
 
You are probably creating the haze. PlastX would not be a good choice prior to a ceramic coating. You are going to get a tons different suggestions.

I would resand with the 3000 until you have a nice even uniform light frosting to the lens.

Go get a Sylvania UV Block Clear Coat Headlight Restoration kit from AA. It is not where the detail supplies are. It is where the replacement headlights and bulbs are located. They are only $10-15 (more if you get the one with the sandpaper). Use the pre cleaner to prep the lenses. You do not have to polish the lenses to clarity. Apply the UV clear coat following the directions. DO NOT go back over things to retouch up spots. Wait until the next day to recoat if you want a second layer. You can probably coat 7-10 pairs of headlight with the coating. The pre-cleaner is only enough for maybe 3 sets of headlights.

This is the real deal UV Clear coat that was on your lenses when the car was new. Not something you will need to keep applying like Plastx. After it had dried for say 48 hours, then apply your nano coating. You will not have to worry about your headlights for years.

I don't think that nano coatings are enough to protect a headlight lens that have been completely re-leveled and brought down to fresh virgin plastic.
 
I looked it up and the current Plastx has polish in it. I'm not sure about the older stuff. I have some and thought it was more of a chemical cleaner. Just because a product has 'polish' in the description, doesn't mean it contains mechanical polishing particles.

I wouldn't sand anymore. Get something with some bite to it and compound before finish polishing. By hand? Maybe try Meg's Ultimate compound or Flitz.
 
If you are not satisfied with those dots I believe you should go back to 400 and start over. I had this problem and it was due to inadequate removal. Once I went back and cleaned off enough to level the dots everything came back to satisfactory. I hand sand but use a 3" DA to do my polishing. Polishing by hand is a little tedious and mundane. Even a drill with 3" velcro would help speed up the polishing.
 
Thanks for all of your advices. They are quite different though :).

So basically what I understand is that my first generation of plastX is not abrasive enough to have this crisp clear lens look. To be honest I am a bit afraid to wet sand again my lights. I did rub for so long that I wonder if I start the whole process will not really weaken the plastic?

Also maybe, I can try to apply finishing polish for my car. I habe a spare bottle from SONAX.
 
Today, I decided to use DA polish machine directly on left side with 3 steps product :
- heavy cut
- medium cut
- finish

On the right side, I decided to do the same but first resand them. Here are the results :

View attachment 63519

Still not crystal clear even though I spent again 2 hours and incredible amount of products.

Being desparate, I decided to use plastX with finishing pad and my DA machine. It improved it a bit but surface is not smooth.
Here are few pictures with light on so you can see defaults:

View attachment 63520

View attachment 63521

View attachment 63522
 
Its possible the defects are inside.

But I would not use plastx prior to a coating.
 
Just by curiosity what would happen if I apply coating after plastX?
 
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