Clearing up Dulled/yellowed headlights

[grasmere59]

This is not 406 based but i have just bought a pair of spare headlights for my E39 Bmw,the clear lenses are dull and yellowed,before i waste all my hard elbow grease with toothpaste etc what do people use for the best results?

[steve_earwig]

Bmw

10 monkeys?

I think Welly found some stuff he rated for this a while back, ah bollocks, it's here viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4577&p=44083&hilit=milky#p44083 but he's deleted the pictures Looks like it was this stuff anyway https://www.amazon.co.uk/Meguiars-Plast ... B0000AY3SR

I should add that a mate of mine here (who's in the motor trade) had no luck polishing the lights on his bummer (don't ask me which, it was red) so I bought him some new ones via ebay. He then flogged it and upgraded to a Berlingo

[grasmere59]

Just tried some Solvol Autosol but the lens seems to have some sort of coating on it.

[dirtydirtydiesel]

Have a search for yellow faded headlights

1500 grit wet & dry paper well soaked, for at least 1/2 hour before use. Soapy water whilst rubbing
& finish off with G3 compound followed by a UV protective polish.

[grasmere59]

I watched a youtube vid and an American guy had the same headlights but in a worse condition,he started off wirh 400 grit,800,1200,and finished off with 2000 then a polishing sompound,he got good results but he didn't seal the end product.

[Welly]

Toothpaste and all that sh*t is bollox, you need to remove the top layer of shyte baked onto the plastic.

I've got a 3M kit now with whizzy-roundy sanding discs of many grits, although it was 'ok' the results left a lot to be desired on the Volvo.

Proper method from my own research is using a DA polisher, lots of grades of wet-n-dry Coarse>>>>Fine, then some polishing cream shiz and finally a coating of UV protectant liquid to stop it happening again soon after.

You might be able to tell I got bored researching this so went for the 3M 'all in one' kit....which didn't really work well, I think maybe my drill speed was lacking in rotational energy, or I was lacking, or a combination of both.

Hope this helps*

[PhillipM]

Oh some headlights (acrylic blends) the chemicals or even just meths wiped over them will take the bulk of the oxidation off, a lot of modern cars however (inc. the 406) are a copolymer with polycarbonate, which it won't work on - in which case it's elbow grease time, I just did mine for the 406, started off with 120 grit to remove the lacquer someone had used to give them a quick tart up at some point, then did the bulk of the sanding with scotchbrite, then up to 1000 grit wet and dry and finished them off with autosol and then some fine polish + a good coat of sealant:



Too a few hours each, I washed the internals out with meths as well.