Headlight Restoration

Edited to add back spaces:

 

This isn't Subi specific...

 

My son's car had really glazed and pitted headlights. I read on the board about sanding the lights on another thread. I was looking for the various sandpapers when I found something from Permatex at Pep Boys. It's called... Headlight Lens Restoration Kit.

 

The lights on his 98 ZX2 look like new now. You can get this kit for $12.99. You can also just get the various wet sandpaper in the below grits and the Plastex and it'll probably come out the same. No pics right now but the results were crystal clear.

 

The kit comes with Wet Sandpaper sheets:1000, 1500, 2000 and 2500, plastic Restoration Polish, cloth and rubber gloves. I also used a spray bottle of luke warm water and a bucket of luke warm water. I also used Meguiars PlastX as the last polish.

 

The polish the kit came with is good but the PlastX is a bit finer.

 

1. Soak all sheets of sandpaper you'll be using for 10 min in bucket of water.

 

2. I began with the 1000. If light is just dull, use 2000 first, Fold sheets in 2 inch square.

 

3. Sand in horizontal direction only. DO NOT USE A CIRCULAR PATTERN.4. Sand both lamps, rinse in bucket several times. Spray with water to clean off between steps.

 

5. Continue to sand with the 1500 and repeat until 2500 as the last sandpaper.

 

6. The lights will be glazed at this point but should look uniform.

 

7. Clean surface with water and let dry.

 

8. Using the flannel cloth, place good amount of polish and rub in a CIRCULAR PATTERN. Using firm pressure, polish enitre lamp.

 

9. Clean with water. If lights are still not clear, repeat polish step.

 

10. As a last step. I polished again with the Plastx polish.

Well, the text got all compressed... sorry.

^^

How about you edit it and put spaces where spaces belong. It isn't helping anybody all jumbled up.

The spaces were there, twice! Weird...

Thanks for the write-up.

I was at Lee Valley Tools and found some 15, 5 and 0.5 micron (probably around 30,000 grit) sandpaper. The last two grits rock. While doing some paint repairs today I tried out the 5 and 0.5u paper after sanding with 2000 grit paper. The amount of buffing with compound needed after using the ultra fine paper is much less than without the extra sanding. I'd imagine that the ultra fine paper would decrease the work on headlights too.

I'd imagine so. I had thought of using some diamond powder I used for faceting ranging from 10,000 to 100,000 but the two polishes I used were enough. Cleaning the scratches is just like polishing facets, the more grades used the better the the final result.