Headlight Restoration Help

[billoftt]

I recently purchased a Meguiar's Heavy Duty Headlight Restoration Kit. However, I think my headlights are a little beyond what the 1000 grit sandpaper can do. The cracks are large enough that the 1000 grit is not taking car of it.

Here is a picture of before wet-sanding:


And here is a close up after I have been wet sanding:


I know I need to get a little bit rougher on the sandpaper, how rough should I go and at what increments?
What do you guys think?

[Mark58]

Re: Headlight Restoration Help

Looks like your protective coat on the plastic has failed. In my opinion try a real small spot with 300 r so and then 1000 to see if any difference. Looks like you can't go wrong in condition they are in.

[Michael Stoops]

Re: Headlight Restoration Help

Those lenses do look pretty horrible, no doubt about it. As with anything, there's a limit to what a given product can do, and these lenses may well challenge even our HD Headlight Restoration Kit. But all is not lost! You can start with a much coarser grit sanding disc and progressively work finer and finer. We have a professional headlight and spot repair kit that contains sanding discs as aggressive as 320 grit, but you don't need to spend close to $400 to purchase this kit. Oh no. You can assemble the parts you need to get this done through Kevin Brown's website, buffdaddy.com He sells the sanding discs individually (meaning you don't have to buy a full box), and sized to fit the hand pad that came in the kit you purchased. All you need to do is grab a few 320, 500 and 800 grit discs, use them first, and then jump in with the HD kit you have. These coarser grits should be used dry, only moving to the damp sanding with the 1000 and 3000 grit discs from your kit. We have a full write up on the use of the pro kit and it will give you a clear picture on how to get through the whole process. The write up shows us using the mini air tools, but you can certainly do this by hand as well. Heck, if you already have a DA buffer you can even use that, just pick up the appropriate backing plate and foam interface pad.

Just keep in mind that you'll go through more discs the coarser they are, meaning you'll use more 320 grit discs than anything else. With them being so inexpensive, we'd suggest you err on the side of excess and pick up 6 of the 320, 4 of the 500, 4 of the 800 and maybe even a couple more 1000 grit discs. That's probably going to be a whopping $10 order (plus tax and shipping). The single 3000 grit disc that came in your kit will be more than sufficient to fully refine the 1000 grit marks you put in during the previous step, and the wool pad in the kit (when mounted in a good drill that you plug into a wall socket) will easily pull out the 3000 grit marks.

Even as bad as these lenses look, there's absolutely no reason why you can't bring them back to looking as good as new. Take some time - this could be an hour or more project in total - and don't rush it and you'll be fine. Beats the heck out of spending a few hundred bucks to replace the headlight assemblies!

[billoftt]

Re: Headlight Restoration Help

Thank you for the info Mike. I was just going to buy some random sandpaper at Walmart, but now that I know there are those discs for sale somewhere, I'm gonna go that route.

The order has been placed, I ordered 6 of each and the total came to $9.68, $4.68 for sandpaper and $5.00 shipping and handling, LOL!

[Mark58]

Re: Headlight Restoration Help

Now when you get the job done post pictures before and after!

[ronniejay]

Re: Headlight Restoration Help

bmark.