Headlights

[Evan.J]

From what I can tell if your doing all of the sanding you say then I feel your not refining the sanding marks enough on each step.

Secondly can you explain more in depth of your process? I'm not sure if your rushing or just missing some small things.

 

[BrianMcLeod]

From what I can tell if your doing all of the sanding you say then I feel your not refining the sanding marks enough on each step.

Secondly can you explain more in depth of your process? I'm not sure if your rushing or just missing some small things.

I checked and the sanding is right after I get done with 3000 grit I break out the flex 3401 with the orange lake country pad with m105 and speed 3.

Polish with gold lake country pad with m205 on speed 2.

After that I do a IPA wipe down and apply opti coat?

 

[BrianMcLeod]

From what I can tell if your doing all of the sanding you say then I feel your not refining the sanding marks enough on each step.

Secondly can you explain more in depth of your process? I'm not sure if your rushing or just missing some small things.

Note the fist set of headlights turned out good but it seems like the other car I did did not

 

[hernandez.art13]

After doing an IPA wipedown inspect your results. If your are satisfied with them then seal them.

 

[AuroraDetailing]

How do you do headlights used 500 dry to make it faster how long does it take you to do a pair of headlight?

I only use 500 dry when it's horribly pitted or the yellowing goes deep and the surface is really rough. I can't see how bad the lights actually are, but from my initial glance from the picture of the yellow lights, I would say you could probably get away with not doing any sanding. I have been using a lot of wet sanding in the past, but yesterday I tried out the Diamondite kit, and started with the plastic enhancer on a 4 inch orange compounding pad on a drill, and even the yellowest parts of the headlight came out damn near perfectly clear, and went completely clear with the second stage (plastic restorer on yellow polishing pad). I did have to sand the front of the lights (which I expected) but I wanted to see how good the Diamondite stuff worked on its own. It actually did take the yellowing out of the entire headlight, including the pitted parts, but didn't take out pitting and rough surfaces so well, which was again, completely expected. i guess it might sound kind of confusing, but to clarify, I did a set of lights on a Malibu, which has headlights that have 3 "faces". The top and sides were what came out near perfect with just the compounding, with the front face being pitted and needed sanding. The face did still have a very slight bit of fogging, so I'm going to go back at it today. My aunt thinks it looks awesome already, but I want it perfect.

I guess what my advice is, is if you don't have much pitting or a really rough surface, with only yellowing, you can probably get away with just compounding, and it wouldn't hurt to just start off with compounding cause you aren't really wasting that much time, and then deciding how coarse you want to go with sanding if necessary and the compounding didn't give you what you want. I guess that is another benefit of compounding first. You can get a better look at the "damage" that you need to correct and see how deep any pitting or cracking goes. If I'm going to sand, I prefer to try to start with 800 or above to save time getting out the sanding marks.