Headlight Restoration
Recently we have been doing a lot of Headlight Restoration jobs! We are always happy to offer this service, as we never have any complaints and the results are impeccable. I wanted to make a quick post going over how we do our headlight restorations, and how you should know if your headlights need restoring.
We always start our headlight restorations by cleaning the surface of the headlight housings. These housings are made of plastic on modern cars, which needs to be protected from the suns harmful UV rays. These plastic housings can yellow in just a few weeks if left unprotected. The common way of protecting headlight housings is by spraying them with a few layers of clear lacquer. The lacquer will prevent the UV rays from the sun from penetrating the plastic, keeping the housings looking bright and shiny. Problems only arise when the lacquer coating becomes damaged. This will happen naturally over the course of many years, leaving cars 10-20 years old in need of a headlight restoration, however it can happen due to many controllable factors as well. Automatic car washes use harsh soaps which damage the coatings on your vehicle, and can easily scratch through lacquer with their brushes causing it to prematurely fail.
The next step after cleaning would be to remove any lacquer still remaining on the headlight housing, as well as any imperfections in the plastic. This can be done in many ways, but the way we do it here is the old fashioned wet sanding method. We wet sand by hand to make sure we get the best quality out of our sanding. We start with a 1000 grit sandpaper, however sometimes we have to go even lower than that to remove the remaining lacquer. Afterwards we move on to 2000, and then 3000 sandpaper for out wetsand. Sometimes after this step it is necessary to polish the housing with a fine polish pad and compound to bring the surface to a mirror finish.
After the polishing we always clean the surface with alcohol and remove any remaining debris, because the next step is to apply our own lacquer. Since we will be spraying our lacquer, it is important to mask off the surrounding areas that we do not intend to coat with lacquer. After we fully mask the areas, we spray a medium heavy coat of 2k Clear lacquer. We apply a second coat after we allow 5 minutes of hardening to the original coat. It is important to not wash your car or touch the lenses for the next 24 hours to allow the lacquer time to fully cure.
This method of headlight restoration is possible on any plastic housing, in any condition. If your headlight has developed any yellowing, haziness, or cloudiness it can be removed and restored. This entire process only takes a professional an hour or two depending on the complexity of the headlight housings geometry. If you are interested in a headlight restoration for your vehicle, reach out to use and we will give you a free quote.
