Freshly Polished Headlights!

[Musicisair]

I just used 3M's Drill-Activiated Sanding Headlight Restoration kit (paid $16.45).

It took about an hour and half, including prep, and clean up. The results came out great!

Before:
IMG_20170916_185838.jpg

After:
IMG_20170923_120321.jpg

And a bonus glamour shot:
IMG_20170923_120349.jpg

[MarketMaster]

Make sure you keep them sealed or they will return to the previous condition even quicker

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[Musicisair]

They've got some 3M Headlight Wax on them now.

I'm thinking of getting some clear lamin-x, which should prevent them from yellowing again.

[tmswell]

Much better!

[tsmith25]

I need to do that as well. My headlights really take away from the appearance of my car at the moment. Those are good results, and a good price. Where did you get the kit from? Its $20 on amazon. Did you pull the lights off of the car, or do it with them in place?

[weedshoes]

I'd hit them with clear coat to prevent yellowing from the sun and then laminX to prevent hazing from road debris. Laminx has a uv product you can apply to the film, but it needs periodic application.

[Musicisair]

I need to do that as well. My headlights really take away from the appearance of my car at the moment. Those are good results, and a good price. Where did you get the kit from? Its $20 on amazon. Did you pull the lights off of the car, or do it with them in place?

I got it from Advanced Auto a few months ago on clearance. I actually left them on the car, but next time I'd take them out, especially since I really need to align them better with the nose panel; it was difficult to get to the outer lower corners with the sanding pads.

- - - Updated - - -

I'd hit them with clear coat to prevent yellowing from the sun and then laminX to prevent hazing from road debris. Laminx has a uv product you can apply to the film, but it needs periodic application.

I didn't realize that clearcoating headlights was a thing! I'll pick some up and spray them (after re-polishing a bit once more) when I do my whole-car body panel alignment soon.

[kostas86]

Nice work!

[weedshoes]

The nice thing about clear coat is it fills in the fine scratches from sanding the lights, so you won't need to polish as much.

[tsmith25]

Well I didn't buy the 3M kit, but I was doing a wash and wax yesterday afternoon, and polished my headlights during the process. The whole car got some Zymol cleaner wax, and the headlights got a few passes of Zymol HD-cleanse, then a couple of passes with the cleaner wax. Interestingly, the cleaner wax also worked well on the trim on the side of the car and the door handles, but not on the bumper trim pieces. We ended up using a vinyl cleaner on the bumper trim to get it back to black. I think I only spent about 20-30 minutes on the headlights with them on the car. Since I was doing it by hand with towels, I was able to get in the tight corners pretty easily.

I accidentally got a before picture of the headlights.
IMG_5166 by Taylor Smith, on Flickr

And here is the after

IMG_5170 by Taylor Smith, on Flickr