Headlight lens polishing/restoration

[BarryK]

My sister asked me to detail and than list and sell her car for her. She is not known for taking care of any vehicle she has ever owned so I knew that just the making the car look anywhere presentable for sale would be a chore. One thing that really stood out when I looked the car over was the headlights - they were VERY, VERY heavily oxidized and yellowed so I figured this would be a good opportunity to do a headlight polishing and document it for others on here that may need to do it themselves.

To simplify this semi-tutorial I'm just going to show the drivers side headlight lens although of course I had to do both sides.

First, here are pics of the headlight lens before starting work on it:

http://www.delawareclassicdetail.com/warehouse/Headlight%20restoration/DSCF1074.JPG
http://www.delawareclassicdetail.com/warehouse/Headlight%20restoration/DSCF1080.JPG
http://www.delawareclassicdetail.com/warehouse/Headlight%20restoration/DSCF1081.JPG

Taping off the working area - you don't want to accidently wetsand your surrounding paint:

http://www.delawareclassicdetail.com/warehouse/Headlight%20restoration/DSCF1108.JPG

Wet/dry sandpaper soaking in a bucket of warm water.

http://www.delawareclassicdetail.com/warehouse/Headlight%20restoration/DSCF1110.JPG

I used 4 levels of grit. I started with 320 grit for the aggressive cutting on the plastic lens than went up to 600, than 1000, and finally 2000.
Just like when wetsanding on paint it doesn't look "pretty" when the wetsanding is done as it still needs to get buffed out. These pics are after all four levels of wetsanding and now ready for buffing. You can see some impovement over the starting condition but nothing to brag about....yet.

http://www.delawareclassicdetail.com/warehouse/Headlight%20restoration/DSCF1111.JPG
http://www.delawareclassicdetail.com/warehouse/Headlight%20restoration/DSCF1112.JPG
http://www.delawareclassicdetail.com/warehouse/Headlight%20restoration/DSCF1113.JPG

starting to polish out the wetsanding. I use small 3" & 3.5" wool pads and foam pads with an adapter on an electric drill for polishing. I picked up these small pads at a car show swap meet vendor booth just for this purpose since there aren't pads this small I can use with my Flex 3401 buffer. Besides, in this case the drill works better since it has a higher rotational speed than the buffer does. I start out with the 3" wool pad and M105 compound for a few passes, follow that with 3" yellow foam pad also with M105 for another 3-4 passes. Finally finish up with a white 3.5" foam pad with PlastX.

http://www.delawareclassicdetail.com/warehouse/Headlight%20restoration/DSCF1114.JPG
http://www.delawareclassicdetail.com/warehouse/Headlight%20restoration/DSCF1115.JPG

Final results. As you can see compared to the beginning condition of the headlight lens there is a significant improvement and the difference is plenty to help make the car much more presentable when shown to prospective buyers

http://www.delawareclassicdetail.com/warehouse/Headlight%20restoration/DSCF1116.JPG
http://www.delawareclassicdetail.com/warehouse/Headlight%20restoration/DSCF1117.JPG
http://www.delawareclassicdetail.com/warehouse/Headlight%20restoration/DSCF1120.JPG
http://www.delawareclassicdetail.com/warehouse/Headlight%20restoration/DSCF1121.JPG

I will say that the end result on this car is not as great as I've had on other cars but it was also the worst starting condition I've ever had to work with. Also, the rest of the car has a LOT of uncorrectable flaws such as deep scratches, scrapes, etc so I wasn't concerned about making it perfect but rather just make a noticeable improvement which I did accomplish and make the car somewhat more presentable for prospective buyers which again I feel was accomplished

[VR8]

Nicely done Barry, makes a huge difference even if it's not perfect. Have you tried the small 3" circular sanding pads on your drill? Might speed up your process a little as everything will work off of your drill. Just need to change from sand paper disc, to wool, to buffing pad.

[PAR Detailing]

Very nice, polished headlights really do make a car stand out or atleast oxidized ones are a major eyesore. Kudos to you my friend.
How long did both take you?

[BarryK]

VR8, nice idea on the 3" sanding disc. I hadn't thought of that.

JonnyBob, both headlights only took about 45 minutes to an hour total

[detaildave]

Nice work.