Hello everyone, today I’m going to explain how to quickly and easily fix yellowing headlights. Yellowing headlights are a typical problem in automobiles, and in addition to being unsightly, they also produce very little light when driving at night. The headlight lens is composed of polycarbonate plastic, and although it is invisible, it has a UV protective coating from the factory. Over time, the covering wears off, and then you leave the car in direct sunlight and the UV light will affected the exposed plastic.
The headlamp can be restored in this manner, but it must be done quickly because the damage can spread deeply into the lens over time and cause tiny cracks that eventually grow larger and destroy the lens. The UV rays from the Sun are breaking the lens there, and the poly Kevin instructed the lens so that the color changes from transparent yellow over time.
Thus, you must replace your headlights before it’s too late, which could be costly. The restoration procedure I’ll outline for you consists of just three steps. The first is to clean the headlight and its surroundings with a microfiber towel to get rid of any dirt. Once the headlight is dry, we can proceed to step 2, which involves using liquid abrasives like cutting compound car polish and metal polish and some dry abrasives like sandpaper to remove the top layer of yellow plastic on the lens.
The key to getting your headlights back to their original state is selecting the correct polish and sandpaper. All of these products contain aluminum oxide as an abrasive agent in varying amounts, ranging from 5% in polishing compound to 10% in cutting compound to 25% in metal polish and 100% in sandpaper.
If you have a handheld grill, use the headlight polishing kit. For the drill, use a wool pad and a foam pad, and you have your sandpapers 600 800 1200 1500 2000 and 3000. If you want, start by masking the surrounding body panels with some sandpaper. For the headlights, it is best to use 600 grit, 1500 grit, and 3000 grit. It is also best to wrap the sandpaper around the foam backing pad to apply uniform pressure.
masking tape to prevent sanding damage to the paint on those panels, then mist the lens and sandpaper with water, and begin sanding. It’s best to work in a single direction, such as horizontally, covering the entire lens with overlapping passes. When the water flowing down the lens turns from yellow to a sort of milky white, wipe the lens so that anyone can see the yellow. Spray water as needed and continue sanding with mild to medium pressure on the sandpaper.
The plastic is gone, but the lens has a consistent white haze that is caused by sanding scratches from the 600 grit sandpaper. Sand again at the 1500 grit, but this time go vertical rather than horizontal to make it simpler to get rid of the horizontal scratches. You get an even fire haze from the 1500 grit, which is difficult to see once you wash the entire lens again. To get ready for the compound, get the 3000 grit and repeat this process in horizontal strokes to get rid of any vertical scratches like that.
For this, you can use a wool pad or a microfiber towel if you’re doing it by hand. If you’re using a drill, apply some compound to the pad, then take off the tape and begin buffing. Keep the pad moving and at a constant speed using uniform pressure to prevent heat buildup and burning the entire plastic cover.
Using overlapping passes that are horizontal, then go to vertical passes and cover the entire area once more. You can start by wiping the lens after applying the compound, but you can take it a step further and use a foam pad and a small amount of polish to restore the factory shine. This is entirely optional, but it gives a brand-new headlamp the mirror shine you see . Wash the lens, and observe the before and after.
Sandpapers can be used to restore headlights with extremely terrible yellow beams after the clarity is restored to that of a brand-new headlight. However, for headlights like this with only mild yellowing, you can skip all the sanding and begin with the compound.
