Clarity

Darren Wright

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Springfield, Missouri
Picked up a new ride this past week. With a lot of the older cars now days that have plastic headlights, they were pretty faded and yellowed. I picked up a set on ebay for $40 new with free shipping (local body parts store wanted $32 each). Man what a difference.

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That should make a nice difference. Congrats on the new ride, too. :thumb:

The headlight covers on my RX300 are getting kind of hazy, so I've been thinking about pulling them off and polishing them. Between micromesh (to 12,000 grit) and a slew of polishing and buffing compounds I have in the shop, I figure I should be able to clean them up. I don't think they've yellowed much, but I might change that opinion after I get them clear again. I'll definitely keep the eBay idea in mind if I decide to replace them. The Lexus dealership wants WAY too much for pretty much anything they sell.
 
My wife's car had terribly hazy headlights. A friend suggested using the 3-M Headlight Restoration kit. It came with 500, 1000, and 2000 grit sanding pads, along with a polishing pad, polishing compound and plastic polish.

Simply mount the polishing pad (similar to a sanding mandrel for hook and loop discs) in your drill and sand/polish away the haze.

I read the directions several times and followed them to the letter and the results were excellent. Be sure to mask out the edges of the lense so that compound and polish do not end up in cracks and crevices where it is hard to remove.

The kit was about $15 at Wal-Mart.
 
Yes, the kits do work. Mothers has one also. We do this at the dealership I work at. I think the charge is something like 30 or 40 bucks each lense. Labor intensive, but not hard. Some of the lenses on these cars are 150.00 and up if bought new. Jim.
 
If the cost of the replacements would have been higher, I'd probably had tried the polish kits. $40 for both with free shipping was a pretty good deal as these also came with the bulbs/sockets, the local replacements were the shells only. The quality on them was pretty good too, didn't have to do any alignment, they set the alignment screws at the factory to ford specs.
 
Just keep any eye out for the TV commercial. I've seen it a couple times. They have this MAGIC stuff that you just wipe on with a cloth and the whole job only takes about THIRTY SECONDS! When done, the lenses look just like new. But hurry up. If you order in the next ten minute, you'll get a second kit FREE (just pay a processing and handling fee). :rofl::rofl:

All kidding aside, looks like you found a great solution for a very reasonable cost. Good job!

John
 
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