The same foggy plastic head lights keep reappearing

[chessplayer]

My wife has 05 Camry . Ive used scratchX, sanding with 800,then 1k, then 1500 wet sand paper, followed by some polish and finally Wax. It seems to these front head light will only stay clear for about 6 months top. Then i will have to redue them. Any sugguestion ?

[Murr1525]

Re: The same foggy plastic head lights keep reappearing

How bad do they get in that time? Re-doing all the way from the 800 grit?

[andytsang]

Re: The same foggy plastic head lights keep reappearing

I wonder Meguiars G17110 Headlight Protectant would help?

[Slats]

Re: The same foggy plastic head lights keep reappearing

Try the protectant- so far it's working great on my Acura but it hasen't been very long. After using the heavy duty restoration kit on my X5 the lights started to look dull after a couple weeks but a quick application of plastX by hand had them looking new again. Worst case scenario is you use plastX more often, say monthly, and you shouldn't have to fool with sanding etc.

[jfelbab]

Re: The same foggy plastic head lights keep reappearing

Once you sand the top layer of the lens off, the UV protection has been removed. If you don't replace the UV protection you will not stop this from reoccurring all too quickly. There are a few nano-coatings now available that will re-coat the lens and restore the same UV protection that was removed. This is the only way to stop the problem.

[Detailing by M]

Re: The same foggy plastic head lights keep reappearing

You need to re-paint them.

http://headlightrenewdoctor.com/Products.php

[mis3]

Re: The same foggy plastic head lights keep reappearing

Once you sand the top layer of the lens off, the UV protection has been removed. If you don't replace the UV protection you will not stop this from reoccurring all too quickly. There are a few nano-coatings now available that will re-coat the lens and restore the same UV protection that was removed. This is the only way to stop the problem.

I read about this UV protection and I also read that waxing the headlights in a regular basis helps. I treats my headlights the same way I treat the painted surfaces; wax and UQW. Happy to say that my headlights are great.

[Michael Stoops]

Re: The same foggy plastic head lights keep reappearing

You finished sanding with 1500 grit "followed by some polish". Can you elaborate on this a bit, please? What polish did you use? If it was doing a great job of concealing your 1500 grit sanding marks rather than removing them, it's simply going to wash away and you'll be left with your sanding marks. On headlight lenses you really should finish sand to 3000 grit and then use a compound to remove those sanding marks.

As others have pointed out, however, this sanding process effectively removes whatever was left of the original factory UV coating so the polycarbonate lenses are now fully exposed and will degrade faster the second time around (or third, fourth, fifth, etc time). Of course, it was this coating that was badly yellowed, pitted, or otherwise damaged anyway so it's not like you could fix the problem without removing it. So once you do a full, proper correction on them you need to wax them regularly at the very least, or preferably apply our Headlight Protectant every couple of months, or go all the way and either apply a protective film to the lenses or spray on a strong UV protective clear coat like the one Mario linked to.