5 Tips - Getting the Most From Headlight Restoration Kits

on this episode to eat sleep drive we finally restore the headlights on my m/45 and I give you five tips for how to get the most out of a headlight restoration kit there are many different types of headlight restoration kits on the market today I'm going to be specifically covering the 3m kit although the procedure for each one is very similar I'm going to be taking you step-by-step through the process but more importantly I'm going to be showing you a couple tips of things I've learned along the way with this kit the first thing you're going to want to do before you restore these headlights is to clean this headlight and the surrounding area the surrounding area because you're going to be taping it off this kind of leads way to my first tip first tip is to buy some quality masking tape this is cheap masking tape and I've already done the other side so learn from my mistake this cheap masking tape it came up especially once it was wet on the other side and started to tear in certain areas so give me all kinds of problems so first tip buy just go ahead and spend the extra money and get quality 3m masking tape we've taped off the area and now we're getting to where we're actually going to start the restoration so what we need to do is remove all this oxidation and to do that we're going to want to use some sort of sandpaper and all of these kits come with typically different kinds of sands sand paper this is a 3m kit so it comes with 500 grit 800 grit more of like a wet sanding I don't even know what to call this magic pad and then finally your your polishing pad but this leads into my second tip so like I said I've already done the other side I created a lot more work for myself because I immediately went to the 500 grit if your headlight is like mine it is oxidized but it's not super terrible don't automatically jump to the 500 you can if if you go through the process with the 800 and further down the line and it's still a little bit hazy you can jump back down to the 500 but don't create more work for yourself and take off more layers than you really need with a 500 so second tip is to use the appropriate disc for your type of oxidation so because of my experience with the other side I'm going to start with an 800 grit you're going to be what sanding so you're going to want to keep this nice this disc nice and lubricated and then just apply gentle pressure and sort of a medium throttle and go ahead and start removing the oxidation you can see what's happening here this is this is milky substance is all the oxidation and you know the the junk that you're trying to get off of this headlight so it's and one thing you also need to need to know is that when you're doing this the headlight is going to get worse before it gets better so when we use a sandpaper it's going to really rough up this surface and it's going to get really cloudy but don't freak out it's part of the process just kind of go with it but keep spraying with your spray bottle keep it nice and lubricated and just use gentle pressure and go through the rest of the headlight now you'll notice while sanding you can see already right here this it's like a white milky substance now if you're at a keen eye when I started it was much more yellow and that was due to all the oxidation now that I've got kind of like a consistent just white milky white milky substance running down I'm pretty sure that I've removed all the heavy layer of oxidation so I'm pretty happy that I started with a hundred grit pad I didn't create more work for myself by jumping right to the 500 pads so now we've come to tip number three these this specific kit this 3 M kit I mentioned has a hundred grit sandpaper which we just used and then it would want you to move on to this disc which is kind of more just soft more of a finishing disc right before a polish but what I noticed on the other side was after using the 800 than this and I'm polishing I still had some light swirls in the headlight which were obviously not ideal get some finer grit sandpaper this is 2,000 grit while you're at the store when you buy your headlight restoration kit do yourself a favor and get this higher grit sandpaper it this 800 grit is just too too coarse and leaves too many marks I'm going to go over by hand because I don't have anything that like would stick on the back of the pad that came with on to the next step so we've done the 800 grit we've done the 2000 grit now we're going to use this foam pad which you know is according to 3m is is somewhere on the lines of a 3,000 grit we're going to use a foam pad now and keep it lubricated just as you did each other step alright so this leads into my fourth tip and this happened on the other side if you see over here this cheap tape and hopefully this doesn't happen if you good quality tape I've rubbed through it from the pad you know it's fully exposed paint now on the other side I was like oh I could totally can totally avoid this I'm not going to worry about it I kept going and then when I pulled all the tape off and I was done I had clearly and I'll show you a photo I had clearly kind of done some damage a little bit on the paint where the tape was missing so tip number four is if you have a tear in your tape stop immediately patch it up and then move on as you can see I've just completely dried the headlight we are officially done with all of our wet sanding so I completely dried it because we're moving on to the second to last step and definitely the most satisfying step because this is where you really get to see the headlight transform I'm going to get my polish put a little bit on here and then so it doesn't fling everywhere go ahead and kind of smear it around the headlight because if you just go balls out and start polishing with with a big goop on here just going to fling everywhere so spread it out and then just use a medium speed and a medium pressure and just go over the whole headlight okay so we just finished our polishing there's still a little polish on the headlight let's remove it with a microfiber towel and see what our end product is look at that look at the clarity all the haziness is gone all the yellowness is gone and it is basically like a new headlight so there is one more step and that leads me to my fifth and final tip and this is perhaps the most crucial because you just spent all this time correcting this headlight and because of that it is now vulnerable to UV more than any other time so what we need to do is protect it before that protectant I'm going to recommend the sealant this is men's our Anna power lock it's a really good sealing we're going to go ahead and apply some sealant first we're going to remove all this tape and just really clean it up real thoroughly before we put the sealant on so the headlights nice and dry we're going to wrap this up with tip number five and that is the protectant once again this is men's are in a power lock but you can use whatever sealant you prefer and just a foam applicator and just like you would do on the rest of the car if you would seal or wax a car all you're going to do is just lightly spread the sealant on don't be afraid to get it on the paint because you're just going to end up protecting the paint no problem there we're going to let this dry to a haze and then we're going to wipe it off and then we will be done the sealant has dried to it haze let's go ahead and remove it and unveil our final product that is now fully protected from those UV rays one thing to keep in mind is that this is sealant and it does only last for a certain amount of time so you know six to twelve months you're going to want to reapply so you can protect that hard work that you have invested and alright guys thanks for watching you know I just want to reiterate those five tips make sure you buy quality tape 3m tape is is hard to beat start with the highest grit sandpaper that you can get away with which will remove the oxidation but not make too much work for you in the end you're going to want to buy some additional higher grit than what is included with a kit to get that ultimate clarity and you don't want any scratches in the end there you're definitely going to want to fix any tape that comes up immediately so you don't end up messing up your paint surrounding the headlight and very last but not least is protect that headlight at the end you spend all that time doing that and you don't want it to just get oxidized again so get a quality sealant and apply it every six to twelve months but as you can see I think we're pretty happy with the result if you liked the video please like and subscribe check out our channel we have a bunch of other do-it-yourself videos car reviews trips to go get cars you know just screwing around with cars so we really appreciate you watching and we hope to see you next time you

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Views: 223,598

Rating: 4.8024135 out of 5

Keywords: headlight restoration, 3m headlight, oxidized headlights, 3m headlight restoration, cloudy headlights, headlight diy, diy, car headlights, yellow headlights

Id: TnabEXpOCsE

Length: 10min 54sec (654 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 26 2016