My headlights were looking like shit thanks to 73k miles; most of which came on the highway.



What I used:
400, 600, 1000, 1500, 2000 grit wet sandpaper
Turtle Wax Polish
Meguiar’s Plastic Cleaner, Polish


I started off by sanding as much of the pitting off the headilights. At this point the headlights will look like shit.

400 grit:


600 grit:


1000 grit:


1500 grit:


2000 grit:


The Meguiar’s Cleaner and Polish said it was non-abrasive which worried me so I decided to use the Turtle Wax Polish just to make sure (How can you smooth something out without removing material?)
Turtle Wax Polish:


Meguiar's Clear Plastic Cleaner:


Meguiar's Clear Plastic Polish:

-J

nic

hawaii boy

Or you could send your lights to me and have me buff the shit out of them in five min....lol

Look good man

that looks really good. i tried that on my old ones. i started out with 400 and they looked like the pic you showed, then i progressed to higher grit, but it was still scratched to hell and back so i just bought a cover off shuwa lol

glad to be of servic

later

2GNT #1865
2006 Yamaha YZF R6 (Blue/Black)
2005 Honda CBR 600 RR (Blue REPSOL)
2003 BMW 325I Premium/Sport Package
2003 Honda CBR 600 RR (sold)
1998 Mitsubishi Eclipse RS (sold)
Shuwa's links:
http://www.facebook.com/Shuwa29
http://s16.photobucket.com/albums/b50/shuwa29/



DarkOne> but we all have that inner ricer that is just dying to come out sometimes...

got any more shuwa? my lens on my projector is all scratched up on the outside.

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-Ian
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-1996 Mitsubishi Eclipse GS (SOLD!)
-2006 Nissan Frontier NISMO
-2003 CBR600RR
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sorry afraid not. the one fauch got was from the headlight the deer destroyed. surprisingly, the outer cover was fine but the inner housing was cracked. i never understood that. and the other headlight (driver side) that was still in perfect condition went to jerseystyle. sorry man, i'm outx(

later

2GNT #1865
2006 Yamaha YZF R6 (Blue/Black)
2005 Honda CBR 600 RR (Blue REPSOL)
2003 BMW 325I Premium/Sport Package
2003 Honda CBR 600 RR (sold)
1998 Mitsubishi Eclipse RS (sold)
Shuwa's links:
http://www.facebook.com/Shuwa29
http://s16.photobucket.com/albums/b50/shuwa29/



DarkOne> but we all have that inner ricer that is just dying to come out sometimes...

hmmm, I just used mother's wheel polish on mine, rubbed it on, buffed it off, and they look good as new.

Lane Adams

1998 GST Spyder
1995 GSX
1995 TSI AWD

>Or you could send your lights to me and have me buff the shit
>out of them in five min....lol

where are you located?? if ur near tampa i'd love to have this done my driver sides looks like shyt!!

WTB: Dodge Omni


http://www.geocities.com/shadyporshe851proof/frame_content/indexframe.html

mods: star stage III clutch + 60mm tb + the normal mods, bass, lights well u get the picture

>Or you could send your lights to me and have me buff the shit
>out of them in five min....lol

Now you tell me.

For a moment I though I had fucked up, but anything was better than the pitted shit I had.

-J

damn that turned out nice.

--------------------


- 05 Subaru STi
- 97 eclipse gs (289whp w/ 276tq)

With the lights on you can see some haze at night. But a lot better than what it was before:

-J

Nice progress pics sir!

There is an excellent polish called Simichrome (do a search on Yahoo and you'll find a million places to get it). It's a metal polish so you can use it on all kinds of stuff, but it also works good on plastic, from what I've read. I have some and have that surface crust/flaky stuff goin on with my lights too, so I'll give it a try and see how if comes out. When I was reading up on it, I found that it is very popular for polishing plastic too.

Those plastic cleaners/polishes work pretty good too imo. Good write up!

I decide to take the pics because I had heard of a few having problems when trying to sand their headlights. I think the trick is to make sure that you don't move on to the next grit of sandpaper till you have taken off all of the scratches from the previous girt of sandpaper.

Basically you're using the roughest grit to remove the pitting and all subsequent grits and polishes to remove the scratches from the previous girt.

To make sure I got all the scratches out I would sand perpendicular to the previous grit's direction. For example: I sanded horizontally with the 400 grit. Then I sanded vertically with the 600 grit till all the scratches were oriented vertically. If I saw any horizontal scratches that ment they were there because of the 400 grit and had to continue sanding with the 600 till they were gone. Then the 1000 grit went horizontally. Etc.

-J

mother mag alumiun polish best ever

Is your dash painted?

very good post squid, and excellent job taking and formatting those progress pics. u should be a photographer. I didn't even think about doing something like that. now I'll definately do that.

2gnt: '99 RS-T, killed by a toyota, pending rebuild...
Daily: Volt
Daily #2: '99 EVG ebike- STOLEN by PEDRO

good job!

DOES ANYONE KNOW WHY 95-96 GET IT SO BAD????

I see a bunch of 95s with yellow drivers side headlights. It looks like someone dropped my headlight in a bucket of honey and let it dry up. But my passengers side is perfect.

Kaiser told me about some stuff that is supposed to work really good but I forgot what it was. Kaiser?

--- My 2gnt WIKI contribution ---> http://www.jamlez.com/2gnt

97 Eclipse Spyder

Thanks for the compliments guys.

I don't know what causes the yellowing on the 95-96 lights. All I know is that the pitting and chipping on mine was caused by the sandblasting effect caused by my many cross-country trips.

-J

Where can I buy high grit sand papers? I went to home depot and the highest wetsand was 600.

old ass thread, but you can find 1500-2000 grit @ walmart, autozone, pepboys...etc. I bought mine at walmart.

SoCal DSM
1996 RS-T: Under Construction
1999 GS AE: New daily driver
"USING NO WAY AS A WAY, HAVING NO LIMITATION AS A LIMITATION"--BRUCE LEE

I went to Wal-mart and the highest they had was 400 grit and it was dry sand paper. Any other ideas?

1998 Eclipse GS

GS-T Axleback|CAI|OBX 4-1 Header|AF/X UDP|

Everytime I try wet sanding it looks okay for like two days then its all foggy again.

Originally posted by pr0
Everytime I try wet sanding it looks okay for like two days then its all foggy again.

__________________________________
-Ryan

Yea I did. Still fogs up. I will end up swapping the lights with the 97-99 ones though soon.

I was wondering how long this lasts usually. Do you have to keep buffing it regularly now that you have done the sanding on it?

--------------------


- 05 Subaru STi
- 97 eclipse gs (289whp w/ 276tq)

Maybe putting on some type of clear sealer on it would keep you from having to buff it all the time now?

'95 GSX - Big16G ~ Leaks, but atleast it runs.

sorry to bring this old post up again, but i have just used this awesome write-up, and found a great addition to it, and since i got a digi. cam. right now, i went crazy, heres some pics of the final products using the 2 liquids:





that'll shine um right up and leave em looking like new after following the sanding write up