Tahoe Headlights HELP

[biggROC85]

I decided to try and tackle my headlights on my 07 Tahoe, I used the turtle wax kit, a few months back and it didnt do anything hardly. So today I pulled out my Ultimate Compound and buffed but lights out, the drivers side looks like a brand new head light, but the passenger side not so much, I wet sanded it down with 1500 grit then UC, Ultimate Polish, and then Gold Class Wax and it looks better but not as new as the driver side, so I went back and wet sanded with 2000 grit UC, UP, and Gold Class Wax and still not the same clarity as the Driver, should i get 1000 grit sand paper, or 2500 and try it again?? Thanks guys.. BTW I'm doing all the polishing by hand.

[The Guz]

Re: Tahoe Headlights HELP

Pics would be helpful to see what you are working with.

[Murr1525]

Re: Tahoe Headlights HELP

Yeah... might not be possible to get better... or one has something on the inside maybe?

[biggROC85]

Re: Tahoe Headlights HELP

Here is the before and after, the pictures make it look clearer than it is,

Before



After

[biggROC85]

Re: Tahoe Headlights HELP

Here is the before and after, the pictures make it look clearer than it is,

Before

[IMG][/IMG]




[IMG][/IMG]


After
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[IMG][/IMG]

[The Guz]

Re: Tahoe Headlights HELP

That looks pretty good. Just an FYI but the meguiar's heavy duty restoration kit comes with 1000 and 3000 sanding discs. You might have luck trying that combo.

[Michael Stoops]

Re: Tahoe Headlights HELP

That looks pretty good. Just an FYI but the meguiar's heavy duty restoration kit comes with 1000 and 3000 sanding discs. You might have luck trying that combo.

Exactly what we were thinking.

Just as with anything else, there are times when a headlight lens doesn't necessarily look all that bad when in reality they need a more aggressive approach than you might think.

For example, last week on of our employees asked if we could take a look at her mother's Cadillac CTS with cloudy headlights. They looked bad, but we've seen far, far worse. We started with 1000 grit wet on a mini DA air tool and it didn't do much of anything. So we stepped down to 800 grit. Still not great. So...... 500 grit dry and finally we were making headway. Once we got a uniform appearance with 500 grit dry we moved back to 800 grit dry, then 1000 grit wet and finally 3000 grit wet. We then buffed them out with M105 on a yellow foam pad via mini rotary DA tool, and finished with M205 on a black finishing pad. They looked brand spanking new but they took more effort that we ever would have guessed just looking at them.

Don't be afraid to use a more aggressive sand paper, but don't do it if you don't need to.

biggROC85, it looks like you've made some really good progress here but, as you say, there's still a bit of room for improvement. Since these lenses don't look bad at all any longer, we wouldn't necessarily go with anything more aggressive than 1000 grit. But honestly, at this stage, we probably wouldn't even go that far. Your 2000 grit media should get the job done, but you want to be very sure that you take the lens to a very uniform, frosted appearance with the sandpaper. Hopefully you're using a backing pad of some sort and not just your bare hands to do the sanding - that's never a good idea due to the pressure points created by lack of a backing pad. Once you've got a very uniform, frosted appearance it's time to move on to your compound. Again, you want to buff until all of your sanding marks are gone before moving on to the next step. If doing the compounding step by hand, you'll have your work cut out for you. If by machine, 4" pads on a DA are great as they really concentrate the energy down to a small area and give better control on contours, tighter areas, etc.

[biggROC85]

Re: Tahoe Headlights HELP

Thanks guys, I went back with my 2000 grit sandpaper, then used some 3000 grit and then Ultimate Compound, Ultimate Polish and now they look great...MAYBE could do it all over again to get them looking PERFECT, but my arm is wore out from doing it ALL by hand. But I'm very impressed with the outcome, I was going to spend $115.00 on eBay and buy some new ones haha.. But Meguiar's and MOL saved the day yet again. I never have and never will use anything but the best Meguiar's is awesome.

[ronniejay]

Re: Tahoe Headlights HELP

Show us your final pics.

[biggROC85]

Re: Tahoe Headlights HELP

Heres the final pics

[IMG][/IMG]

[IMG][/IMG]

[The Guz]

Re: Tahoe Headlights HELP

Nice job. They look great.

[Michael Stoops]

Re: Tahoe Headlights HELP

Did you polish out the sanding marks by hand using UC???? No wonder your arm is tired!!

Glad to hear it worked out for you, and the lenses do look great!

[biggROC85]

Re: Tahoe Headlights HELP

Yep I scrubbed and scrubbed haha. Just bought a DA yesterday though so I think I'm going to try doing that now too just to get better results haha.