Headlight Restoration, how how much is too much to remove?

[Matt@Revive]

i'm starting to do headlight restorations for friends and co-workers, i'm running into lights that are "checked" or "cracked" fairly deep into the plastic. i tell the owner's that the defect is too deep to safely remove, but can they be fixed?

when do you call a headlight good enough, and when do you keep sanding?

 

[Grifffx4]

Are you sanding? I've seen a few like this but sanding with 500, 800, 1000, 3000, then m101 and last m205 took it out.

 

[Matt@Revive]

yeah, i started with 600 and stepped down to 2000, then m105/m205.

i did it to a Honda Civic today and most of the light cam outs great, but there was a large section that was "cracked/crackled"

 

[Calendyr]

Can't really remove cracks as far as I know. So just do the normal 600 to polish process and if there are cracks, so be it.

 

[clazzik71]

i do headlights for cars and big Riggs but when i came across a headlight cracked i try to stay away not worth the time

 

[Matt@Revive]

this is the honda headlight i did this weekend. i focused on th small cluster of cracks, is this past restoring to like new?

 

[dschia]

You should be able to restore those with sanding but unless you try, you really wont know. The overall condition looks okay so I will be hesitant to strip off everything with sanding just to chase after those micro cracks.

If I decided to restore this (Honda lens), I will probably try 600gr first and observe whether I need a lower grit. For that condition, 800gr and above should improve the condition significantly but may not be efficient.

 

[Matt@Revive]

i started with 600 grit and worked it for a little bit focusing on the cracked area. this is the result after 600-2000 grit, m105/m205.

 

[dschia]

Since you have tried and have work in with 600gr for quite some time, I would try 300-400gr instead to speed things up. That is about the lowest that I am comfortable using with this headlight unless the lamp feel 'hard' to sand. For 320-360gr, use 500gr before 800gr. If you only have 600gr, then the next lowest grit I would use is 360gr.

 

[NinjaPain]

I had a similar situation yesterday. The left headlight had deep scratches that I just decided to live with.