I'm going to go do my headlight (pictured at the top of page 2) with 2000 grit and 3M Plastic Polish right now, pics to come soon with my new camera

 

cool thanks. before and after pics please. i have a porter cable that i use to buff out my car, should i use that or do you think doing it by hand will achieve a better result?

 

The faster the better....unless its so fast that it burns the lense

 

Well I did it, and I don't have pics right now but I will take some tomorrow when the lighting is better.

It worked VERY well, unfortunately from the pictures you wont really be able to tell because a lot of the crap I have happens to be on the INSIDE part of the lens, so I will have to open the headlight and clean it from inside eventually. But pics to come tomorrow!

2000 grit wetsand by hand + 3M Plastic Polish buffed by hand + Meguiars finishing glaze applied by hand.

 

Hey, those of you guys that have done this. Have your headlights yellowed over time? Supposedly these polycarbonate lenses have a UV coating on the surface. If you sand and buff it...you are obviously removing this layer of coating. Personally I have had no problems so far, but I only had to sand down very little.

And to the previous comments, yes I hand buffed my lenses.
And yes a ton of elbow grease and a few hours, but the lenses turned out nice and shiny

 

OOOOOO yellowing over time....thats me. After about a month or so they begin to get this hazy yellow glaze on top. Usually after a wash though and intense scrubbing the yellow goes away. Is there a product that i can purchase to remove this. Such as that stock UV coating? Maybe a spray on application?

 

so if i wanna clean the inside of my headlights, i gotta uses the oven method to take it apart first right?

 

You don't have to stick it in the oven, you can use a heatgun. Most peple are afraid of ruining their headlights in the oven. I myself do it and find it the easiest way.

 

So....

If I sand the headlights, they might turn yellow in a month...?

 

It is "possible" depends how deep you sand. These headlight lenses are made out of Polycarbonate. By itself it is not UV resistant and will yellow over time. To counter this there is a very thin layer of UV blocking coating on the outside of the lens. Now if you sand that layer off, obviously the lenses will start to yellow over time. It has not happened to mine yet and it's been more than half a year. I usually park my car outside too so it's always being exposed to the sun. Maybe it's because I didn't sand off too much of the coating. The headlights I used for my retrofit weren't too badly pitted so I didn't have to do too much sanding.

 

Thanks. I'll give it a shot.

How about applying 303 Aerospace protectant on the headlights after sanding? It's supposed to provide good protection agaist UV damage.

 

If this method works for you, i'll buy me a can and once i sand and polish the last time, i will spray some of that stuff on

 

ok..i sanded and sanded..used a PC to buff and buff. its way better looking now but i think i have to put more elbow into this weekend to get it back to normal.

THANK YOU CL