Plastic Headlamps Restoration

Plastic headlamp lenses reduce
weight and reduce lens breakage,
which can improve nighttime
visibility and safety

Advantages
The use of plastic in headlamp applications enables automakers to reduce weight without
sacrificing optical performance while increasing resistance to breakage.

-Glass headlamp lenses began to be replaced with polycarbonate ones in the 1980s.3 Today,
virtually all glass lenses have been replaced by transparent polycarbonate plastics.4

-Plastic offers the advantage of being an inherently light material that can be easily made in thin sections and stepped shapes, reducing weight and the possibility of breakage “without sacrificing optical performance.”


Disadvantages
Having your headlights on or being exposed to the heat of the day causes the pores to open allowing debris from the road to get in. Debris, together with a combination of environmental factors such as the sun (UV rays), smog, acid rain, car exhaust, and harsh chemicals used to wash your car can cause the plastic headlight lenses to become oxidized.

-Plastic oxidation leads to lens discoloration, which transforms new, clear, bright, shiny plastic to a dull yellow tint that appears to be foggy, hazy, or cloudy.

- This process (oxidation), as described above, not only becomes an eyesore but also is unsafe. Because of the degradation of the plastic lens, less light passed through resulting in diminished visibility during night driving.

-The car owner either had to deal with these cloudy yellow, oxidized headlight lenses posing serious safety issues or purchase expensive replacement headlights costing hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Here are budget tools i used for this excercise :
-A few pieces of cloth for polishing
-1000 and 800 grit sandpapers
-1 tube Autosol Metal cleaner( it cost MYR 8.50)
-Soft99 meta clean(MYR 20.00)






Direction
-Cover up other body parts with masking-tape,to prevent unwanted scratch.

-Carry out wet sanding on the lense surface with 1000 grit sandpaper,follow up with finer 800 garit sandpaper.about 3to 4 sheets of sandpaper will be used.Wet sanding is very important if you want to see a good result.

before:


After wet sanding it will become like this:


(make sure all micro-cracks have been eliminated before polishing job)

-After wet sanding,bring the gloss back with Autosol Metal Cleaner on the first stage polish,final stage with soft99 Meta Clean,and you will notice the different.

Check out the result!