how to clean headlight cover

====================== Meguiars makes a foam "power ball" attachment that you can chuck into a drill motor. Meguiars also makes a plastic polish you can use. If you don't want the expense of these items - although they work great at removing the surface abrasion and clouding from years of pushing through atmospheric grit, you can just get a white polishing compound used for body work - a fine compound - not the rubbing compound, and apply it by hand with a cotton cloth.

A quick search on the web shows:

You might want to check the local auto parts stores too and see if they have something similar. At $15.99 (plus shipping?) it's not bad if works as advertised.

yj snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com wrote:

The best way to clean them up is to wet sand them with 3M paper starting at 1000, and working your way thru 1500, 2000, then 2500. Sand in one direction for one step, then the opposite direction for the next step. Clean the lense off when you think you have thoroughly sanded it and make sure all your scratch lines are in the same direction you sanded and are uniform. Uniformity is important for good results, especially if the lense is in bad shape and is yellowing. If it's not uniform, continue your sanding with the same paper grade. When you get to 2500, do it in both directions. Finally, you can use a rubbing compound once or twice, then finish off with a plastic polish.

Some key points:

1. use a little bit of dish soap in the water and soak the sandpaper thoroughly. Always ensure that the paper is well lubricated when sanding the lense. Re-dip it in the water often.

1. Don't mix up the different paper grades. Either use a separate bucket of water for each grade, or thoroughly rinse out the bucket between grade applications and put fresh water/soap in for each step.

2. You only need light, even pressure when wet sanding. Only apply enough pressure using your fingertips so that you can feel the paper cutting initially. As you progress up thru the grades, you will feel this less.

Dave Mc

Bah, all THAT work makes it cheaper to just REPLACE them. That is, if you value your own time.

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Try a kit purchased from a nearby handy-homeowner car store. They're inexpensive and the one I used consists of a flexible disk and a number of adhesive pads that are lightly coated with what seems to me white "Tripoli" polishing compound. Don't recall the brand name but it probably doesn't matter, anyway. A drill and misting spray bottle are required. Although, the clarity does not approach that of the nearly new replacement lens on the other side of the vehicle, neither does the price and it is far-and-away better than it was. My application was a rush job and there's no doubt that more time spent polishing will produce a better finish. Remember that the inside surface dulls, too, so it can't be got "perfect".

Well, this is a valid point if you are a highly paid professional and are paid by the hour. It should only take about 45 min per side. You CAN have a beer close by. :)

dave mc

Hmmm...I thought I posted this info here...

There is a kit available that will recoat the plastic with an optical epoxy similar to the OEM optical coating. It's $20 at AutoZone and CarQuest.

I haven't tried it...if I hadn't broken a bunch of bolts in the failing engine of my Grand Voyager I was going to give it a try...but I gave the thing away after I broke the bolts. Still ran, but the Idler pully was GONE, and the remains of the bolt wouldn't come out.

All the rest of my cars have glass headlights, except the Scion, and it's too soon to 'experiment' with that car! ;)

That's a total of 90 minutes and you would just drink ONE can of beer in that time? Surely you jest.

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=========== Meguiar's power ball and plastic polish. One tube of polish lasts a long time - no risk of scratching because the ball is made of foam, easy to polish because it is driven by your drill motor, plus the foam goes around the protrusions on the face of the headllight. Leaves a gleaming surface. Worked for me. This was after I got tired of polishing by hand.

I hr to fix is cheaper than replacement if its a Plastic lens. Also fogging comes from inside.. Remove unit and pour in Denatured alcohol, not Rubbing alcohol, shake around and drain out , and blow in fresh air, let dry for 4-10 hrs. use better bulbs also at this point, Sylvania Silverstars are good.

Hmm. So, do Silverstars place any additional load on the wiring or the relays? If they are brighter, don't they produce more heat? Might not that heat screw up the plastic lenses? Up here, 90% of the vehicles with the "white" light head lights seem to have them aimed right into the eyes of oncoming drivers. Else, brighter light headlights just happen to create more glare.

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dangerous and should be outlawed. The only place they should be allowed is for strictly off road use.

Possibly. Apparently so do many of the "high performance" drop in bulbs. The story is that it's possible to legally boost the power up slightly higher than the 55 W nominal. This does tend to reduce average life of the bulbs.

I wouldn't recommend Sylvania Silverstar. Those bulbs have a blue coating that filters out some of the yellow light. They have to be slightly overdriven to compensate for the loss of light output. The tint also traps heat which leads to possibly the most abysmal lifespan. Sylvania's own specs give the 9006 Silverstar an average life of 150 hours, compared to 850 for the XtraVision, 1000 for their standard version, and 1500 for their long-life version. There are also several opinions that Silverstar doesn't even produce more usable light than other less expensive high performance bulbs.

I bought a pair of GE Nighthawks for my folks' 2001 Camry. Seems to work fine.