attilio

I was inspired by recent posts to tackle my headlight lenses. For Denick, who did the sanding work by hand, I give you all the props. I tried that for about an hour and that sucked hard, so I had to improvise. I have a granite wet sanding/polishing grinder and with the purchase of a few sizes of pads and wet sanding paper from 80 grit up to 12000 grit (yup 12000, not 1200), I was able to clear things up. After I baked them apart (285 for 10min), the whole process took about 6 hours total for the 2 lenses. I haven't decided what I'm going to do to upgrade the internals. I was hoping to get a few ideas from the club. Here's a few pics . . .

deknick

they look kind of hazy, what's your plan of attack for that?

and i know there's a way to do it with a machine, and will be doing that on my next set, and hopefully able to get enough interest in them to be able to sell a couple sets if i can get the work down to a quicker timeframe

USMCgs3

Yeah they look hazy but I think it's goin in the right direction, but I wonder if these would look good on all color gs3 or just the lighter colors, to me it seems kinda out of place on a black car. I Guess it's too much clear on a dark paint car. Idk just my view on it. Haha still props for taking the time to share with us man!!

Supremeg56

iTrader: (1)

nice great job on the work mine to deknick if you do end up selling some headlights how much would you sell them for so i have an idea

lanthern22

iTrader: (1)

Wow that looks cool i will attempt to finish mine since i did only one so far but i had the chrome bezel painted black and the lens clear coated now i just need to do one more but the thought of the sanding makes me think twice.
i wanna see the finish product

deknick

lanthern22, have a look at my project thread with my headlights, there's a finished sanded, polishing, clear coated lense in there, with a mock of my daytime running lights, and projector retrofit

attilio

I took those pics after the 2nd run thru all the grits. After the 4th, its a little clearer. I think what you're seeing are the tiny scratches left over from the heaviest grit. Getting those out was definitely the hardest part. Also, there are some lines that run front to back across the interior of the lens that look to be age related. I suppose I could keep going until I have crystal, but I have a life so I think I'm gonna be happy with it. I still have to do a final polish and buff too, maybe clearcoat. Any way you look at it, its way better than the yellow, blurry mess I had before. I'll snap more pics once I add some HID's and get them all back together. I have a 2-tone pearl white and grey, so I think it will look good.

attilio

In case you didn't know, the first pic was before and after. I hadn't baked the passenger side light apart yet. So yeah, its definitely hazy.

lanthern22

iTrader: (1)

yea it looks really cool but how did you get it to look crystal clear?? after i got it clear coated it still looked hazed but i still have not tried to polish them yet but i have been busy with work and the body work on my car. maybe now that my car is no longer my daily driver i can take my time doing the stuff i wanna do like finish the headlights and LED tail lights!!