The plastic material that the headlights of your car is made up of will likely get worn down and be too dim or become cloudy over time. If your car headlights aren’t as shiny as a new penny anymore, it may be time to give them a good cleaning. This helpful guide can make the headlights of your car seem brand new again.
Did you know that a full replacement of headlights for a car can cost up to a thousand dollars? You shouldn’t have to be paying that much just for your lights to be bright again. The more affordable solution would be cleaning your car’s headlights yourself.
Step 1. Clean Your Car
To get all of the dirt that is covering the surface of your vehicle off, you’re going to want to give your car a good washing. You can wax your car too to make drips less likely to want to attach to the surface of your car.
Step 2. Cut Through All This Blue Tape
Cover the area around the headlamp of your car with some blue tape. In later steps, we will be sanding and polishing the light so if you have to have any metal finishes to your car’s headlights you may want to remove these details. You wouldn’t want to get a shiny new headlight but ruin the chrome finish on your car.
Step 3. Sanding
The yellowing and roughness that covers your car’s headlights overtime can be removed with a thorough sanding. Make sure that your sandpaper is approximately 1,000 grit and that you wet the sandpaper in water that is cold. You want to be extremely careful just to say the light and not damage any of the paint or metal on the car. You can sand off scratches and any yellow colors that might happen to be on the light. Sand until you are satisfied and don’t be afraid to take your time.
Now that you have completed this process and cleaned the area, allow the light to dry. You will complete this process by slowly working up your grit of sandpaper. You will go all the way up to 3,000 grit. You can redo the tape if it gets messed up over time.
Step 4. Polish and Seal
Congratulations! You’ve done the hard part. After all that hard work of sanding is finally over, you can celebrate. Polish up your lens and apply some form of UV protectant. Adjust your new clean headlights correctly and you are ready to roll again!
Don’t drive around with dirty headlights or waste money getting them professionally replaced. Get your headlights shining as good as new right from the comfort of your own home!