Headlight lens restore

With missting up headlights ( they look smokey) does the product lensresore actually work or is a person better off buying new head lights

There are lots of products that claim to restore headlights.

Wet sanding with finer and finer paper, and following with a polishing compound, probably costs less.

I’d try anything before I bought a new headlight. Have you priced one?

Yes, it works. But I’ve had excellent success using regular polishing compound from the parts store with a drill-mounted buffing pad and lots of water. Others have had success with toothpaste. Any microscopic abrasive suspended in a paste type medium should work great.

Someone here suggested that waxing the lights after you’re done prolongs the results. I haven’t tried that, but I will next time. It makes sense.

Here’s another recent thread on this: http://community.cartalk.com/posts/list/2134546.page

The next time I do mine I’m going to try the laquer thinner (see Bing’s post).

This is just another example of the auto company stylist winning over the engineers.  The old sealed beam lamps, not only were far cheaper and easier to replace, but you replaced the glass lens for free with each lamp replacement.

In general I agree with you, but I have to add that the bulbs in my tC are far easier to replace than the old sealed beam units were. Those dumb screws on the aluminum holding rings always got corroded and the heads got screwed up trying to get them out. And in my pickup the grill and the bumper were in the way of the aluminum ears. The repair manual actually directed the headlight changer to remove the front bumper, remove the grill, and then remove the headlights.

My tC is just turn the turret 1/4 turn, pull straight out, unplug the bulb, plug the new bulb in, and reverse the process.

My daughter’s Civic was designed by Beezlebub. It requires an amazing array of unintuitive actions on impossible to see assemblages.

You might try the following. I recently examined several sets of lenses very closely with a magnifying glass and determined the fogginess is the result of grit blasting. (dirt, bugs, etc. hitting the lenses at speed)

Since polishing only will not remove the countless pits and scratches I sanded the lenses with 1000 grit wet/dry sandpaper under a constant water bath.
This was repeated with 1500 grit and finally with 2000 grit; all under the water bath.

This removed all but the deepest pits/scratches and the final stage was polishing the lenses with Meguiars lens polish and a polishing wheel.
The’re all crystal clear now and look like brand new with about triple the light output.

Meguiars makes a product called Plast-X that works great…And to reinforce Joe’s post, H-6014’s are STILL used on most over-the-road trucks. There is a REASON for that!! Plastic lenses suck…

Another vote for Plast-X