headlight oxidation

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NDRYDEN123

New member
is there any other way than wet sanding my headlight to remove the yellow haze/oxidation on my headlight housing. it seems that most of the haze is on the inside of my headlight houseing. thanks in advance for any insider info.
 
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thats an easy one. take a terry cloth and dip it in mothers metal polish. polish the crap out of them. after your done...do it again and then burnish the surface with a microfiber towel to take off the residual. once they start to yellow they tend to keep yellowing so you will have to do it every so often. Ive found that by putting the headlight protective film on new lenses before the yellowing you protect them from harmful uv rays from the start.

btw, im a professional detailer. hope that helps
 
I just took it to a friend of mines body shop. He used wet sand paper on a high speed orbital sander and did that with both headlights. He then used a high speed buffer with some type of polish and they were done in 30 minutes. they look brand new! And he said I shouldn't have to ever do it again.
 
same things as a color sand...yup that works too. most people on here probably wont go through the trouble. Ive heard of clear coating the tail lenses to make them look new again. i wonder if you could do that on headlights...or would the heat not be good? i wonder
 
oneflat83 said:
same things as a color sand...yup that works too. most people on here probably wont go through the trouble. Ive heard of clear coating the tail lenses to make them look new again. i wonder if you could do that on headlights...or would the heat not be good? i wonder
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To be honest, I've never heard of clear coating any lights. I don't think it would be good because of the heat that naturallt gets emitted from the headlights. I guess you could try it. But when I wash my car, I put that Nu Finish car polish on the lights and I don't know if that's good either but only time will tell.
 
The only successful way is to remove the yellow and hazy material, leaving the good plastic as the outside coating. It does involve a lot of sanding, buffing and polishing, but it can be done. It just depends on how much time you want to spend doing it.
 
What about putting on the 3M type of plastic protection on it? Not only does it protect against chips as a physical layer, but the adhesive & plastic should prevent oxygen and an oxidizing reaction, no?
 
pmrowczynski said:
What about putting on the 3M type of plastic protection on it? Not only does it protect against chips as a physical layer, but the adhesive & plastic should prevent oxygen and an oxidizing reaction, no?
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I put on some Lamin-X film covers over my headlamps. I chose the light-tint as to not lose too much of the brightness of the lights. I think that it really sets off my Driftwood Pearl LTD.
 
NDRYDEN123 said:
Haha that works too. I just didn't want to spend over $250.00 for the housing.
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lol... Probably I'll do this too. If you are doing it the 1st time and fail to achieve a good output you will have to buy a new one. Suggestion: GO to a detailer and watch how he do it!



______________
Thepartsbin
 
KarenCaren said:
lol... Probably I'll do this too. If you are doing it the 1st time and fail to achieve a good output you will have to buy a new one. Suggestion: GO to a detailer and watch how he do it!



______________
Thepartsbin
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The guy that did mine is a family friend of ours and did such a wonderful job on the one that was bad, he went back and did the one that was fine to make it look even. And I watched him do it and I personally wouldn't do it myself just because I'd be afraid of messing something up.
 
I have seen 2 working solutions to this. 3M makes an at home sanding kit that you just use with a drill. I have seen that work 99.9% of the time. Then there is another solution you can find at autozone or pepboys or whatever auto parts store is around. I think it is also made by 3M but it is a gel/paste kind of like a liquid wax that you buff on by hand then just buff off. This worked for me on an old set of headlights just fine.
 
broncosi said:
Then there is another solution you can find at autozone or pepboys or whatever auto parts store is around. I think it is also made by 3M but it is a gel/paste kind of like a liquid wax that you buff on by hand then just buff off. This worked for me on an old set of headlights just fine.
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Just did this the other week on my wifes rav4, took a bit of rubbing, but worked great. I forget the brand of "wax" I used, it took a whole 20 min and about $7.
 
I've had pretty good luck using Meguiar's PlastX. I used it on the headlights of my G35, and made quite a difference. It took a little elbow grease and a few applications, but it sure beats spending some cash and taking it to a body shop.

Meguiars PlastX
 
This is a common issue for the G35 guys. I use Mequires Plastx once a month or so. It usually goes 2 months if I put a coat of wax over when Im done. Its a temp fix obviously, but they look like new and takes no more than 5 minutes.
 
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