Saw a commercial last night for a product called Fast Brite that is supposed to clear up foggy or scrached headlights. Anyone ever use it? Does it work?
I’ve not, but I’d rather use a headlight cleaning product from one of the established car care companies, like Turtle Wax, Mother’s, or 3M. They’re easy to find at the car parts store.
Most of the time unless your headlights aren’t that bad to begin with, you’re going to need to polish the headlights in order to restore their shine.
A good step to add to any headlight restoration is to bring them to a body shop after you get them clear, and have them put clearcoat on them. That’ll help keep them from dulling again.
I haven’t used “Fast Bright”, but I’ve cleaned a number of headlights using regular polishing compound (not to be confused with car wax) and with “Mother’s” headlight cleaner. They both work great. If you really want a good job, put a sponge polishing ball on an electric drill and using plenty of water along with the polish, they’ll clear right up.
Rather than buy something you see advertised on TV, go to the local auto parts store and buy a headlight polishing kit. It’s safer to do it that way.
Rather than spend 18 bucks try a dab of toothpaste, It will work just as well and be easier on the pocketbook.
Toothpaste is so corrosive, I might not suggest using it on plastic unless you are sure it won’t do any harm, and even then, make sure you rinse it all off completely and none gets into the crevices around the headlight housing.
It’s usually safe to use on a headlight, but the results don’t last all that long unless you then protect it
I’d stay away from the toothpaste with Calcium though.
At least your car would be “minty fresh”!
And your headlights would be free of cavities. For those who are worried about getting toothpaste in the crevices, you may floss.
Seriously, toothpast is perfectly safe. Like the parts store cleaners, it’s simply a very mild abrasive suspended in a nonviscous media. With all of them care should be taken to protect the surrounding trim or paint, and they all should be rinsed well after.
I’ve read here tha waxing the light after cleaning helps retain the clarity. I don’t know if it really works, but it seems logical so I’ve taken to doing that now. Seems to help.
The parts store product is a kit, and not necessarily a cleaner. The kit I bought came with fine grit sand paper and polish.
Parts stores sell just the cleaner too. In a variety of different brands.
One thing I learned when using abrasives on the headlights is to tape down something beefier than masking tape around the lenses. One slip in hundreds of back-and-forths with the electric drill will take the paint off the car. Disappointing even if the headlights work better!
My son was visiting one weekend and I decided to do the toothpaste trick on his Camry seeing as how I misplaced the PlasticX. It worked fine and any results will be just as long lasting as PlasticX.
I miss glass. 