Today was a fine day, so I took it upon myself to fix my nasty headlights. I bought 800, 1500, and 2000 grit sandpaper from Advance Auto. You will also need a bucket of water, and a hose aswell as a dry CLEAN rag and your favorite plastic polish. I used Kit Scratch Removal and it worked well. Remove your lights from the car, obviously. Fill up your bucket with a little bit of water. Take a full sheet of the 800 grip paper, fold it in half. Dip it in the bucket of water and start sanding long ways across the light. Make sure the area you are sanding is wet at all times and use ALOT of elbow grease!!! The nasty stuff will turn into what seems to be milk, and start running down the light. Keep going. Do the whole light evenly untill the first side of the sandpaper starts to dull out. Take the light, spray off the residue with your hose. Fold the sheet of sandpaper over, start sanding in the same pattern again evenly untill the sandpaper starts to dull. Take your light, spray it off with the hose again. This time, empty the nasty bucket water and refill it with clean water. Now, you are done with one sheet of the 800 grip paper. Take a second sheet of 800 grit, repeat the same process. After you are finished with the second sheet of 800, rinse the light and dump/refill the water once again. Now, take your 1500 grit, dip it in the water, sand long ways across the light again. Fallow the same guidlines as you do with the 800 grit paper. I only used ONE sheet of 1500 grit as compared to TWO sheets of 800 grit. After you are finished with the sheet of 1500, rinse the light and dump/refill the bucket. Now, take your 2000 grit. Once you have folded your 2000 grit, work the whole light evenly with one side of the sandpaper only. After it dulls, wash the light off. Flip to your clean side of 2000 grit and LIGHTLY go over the light evenly untill the light becomes very smooth to run the paper over. Once your done, rinse the light very well and let it dry. After the light has dried, take your towel/rag or whatever you want to use to polish the light with, and apply your polish. Spread it evenly around, wipe the light off. Repeat polishing process again (I did anyway). Wipe it off, and look at your nearly new headlights. The sandpaper was no more than $12 and it came with 4-5 sheets in each different pack. PLENTY to do even two sets of lights. The polish ranges depending on what you want. The stuff I used was probaly no more than $2-3, but it did its job well. THIS IS NOT GOING TO LEAVE YOU WITH A PERFECT, FLAWLESS LIGHT!!! There are several small scratches that are NOT easily seen unless you are right close to the light. The dirt coming off the lights scratched the lenses, if you went back over them you could take them out but its not worth it IMO. So, here is your result... Before: After:
try using a mini power ball from mothers next time. it will make the polishing process go a lot faster and your headlight will be a little clearer.
I've heard great things about the powerball. The lights are clearer in person than in the pics, but they aren't 100% new looking. They aren't too far shy of it though...
Nice writeup mang! I did a similar job on my headlights several months ago and they are holding up well. And +1 to forum155pl using the rubbing compound helps clear it up and fills the light scratches, I topped mine off with Plastic X I think its made by Meguires. This should be added to the important threads sticky in tech
