Headlight Scratches & Cleaning

[ron]

hey Kahuna...

I haven't tried the process yet but it's actually not difficult to do it yourself. I would go to a plastics shop like Tap Plastics and purchase a bottle of polishing agent or compound and use a clean rag to buff out the minor blemishes. You can probably order the agent via their website (tapplastics.com).

This process will take a lot of elbow grease , time, and patience if done by hand. The ideal way of doing this effortlessly and quickly would be using an electric buffer/polisher. To ensure you won't get into your paint job/cladding accidently, I'd remove the light assembly entirely from the vehicle.

For larger more significant scratches, I'd start off with the WET sandpaper process using a lower grit as you mentioned and work yourself into a higher grit. Then follow up with the polishing. Scratches and dents that don't come off with the polishing will need to be sanded first in order to smooth out to a level surface.

Depending on how much effort, time and work you put into the process, you can actually polish the lens til it looks brand new again. Do keep in mind that the it's polycarbonate (same plastic used for bullet-proof glass) and it's not going to be easy and results will be slow. But if you're determined to get it into a flawless level then you'll love the end results.