How To Clean & Restore Headlights - Remove Yellow, Foggy Headlight Oxidation!

what is up you guys in today's video I'm gonna show you guys how to clear up hazy headlights foggy headlights this 335 I just bought one of the downfalls that's been bothering me are these uh hazy headlights I don't know if you guys can see this is on the outside the lenses are starting to oxidate and yellow and it's going across the whole lens it's like the Sun almost burned into them so I've done this before and I'm gonna share with you guys the best method I have found to make these look like glass again so let's get to it okay so ignore my messy workbench here but I'm gonna focus on the products we're gonna be using today and the main star here the thing you're gonna want the most is this 3m headlight restoration systems kit I've used this before I've used other kits this is the best one I've found it works the best it's a good value for the price and I'm just gonna continue using it because I know it works well in addition to that you'll need a drill here whether it's cordless or battery-powered it doesn't really matter I actually like to use the ones corded because then I don't have to worry about burning through the battery they usually have a little more power but any drill will work then you'll also want some masking tape this you'll be masking off kind of a bumper and surrounding areas so you don't scuff that up while you're using this kit you only want to be using that on the headlights and then you'll need a spray bottle filled with water so I will link all this stuff in the description this kit some good tape I've had and all these and it also wouldn't hurt to have a microfiber cloth you can get away without having one but it's a lot easier to wipe off the lenses in between the steps so you're not carrying over debris so I guess it's pretty important you either have at least a microfiber towel or even a shop towel would work so that's our parts list I'm gonna dive right into it so let's get started step one is to spray this down with just a regular glass cleaner just getting any dirt debris you just wash your car you should be fine but I know I got a few dead bugs here on my front end that I want to at least get off before we start using the 3m kit so that's the first step clean the lens in the next step we're gonna start masking off the areas around the headlight so if you have a spot where your hood meets the headlight it's just easier to pop the hood one less area the tape and then you'll grab your 3m tape and start taping all the painted panel body areas around the headlight this just protects the paint so that once we start sanding we don't have to worry about scratch and up and sanding through good paint so I'm gonna fast forward this clip but you want a couple layers of masking tape just cover all these spots so all right so as you can see here I taped up all the surroundings of the headlights I actually did a double layer of tape on all the areas immediately around the headlights just because on creases like this as you begin the restoration process you might burn through the first layer of tape so I just do two two layers of tape all the way around and I do another piece of tape so you've got too wide and too deep doesn't hurt to go overboard with the tape and I've just laid a blanket over the top of the engine bay just so water and splatter doesn't get up in there but now we should be ready to go ahead with the first step of the actual 3m process so let me pop this open and I'll explain what to do next okay so once you open the package you're gonna see a couple different things inside this orange pad this is gonna be for the very final step so you can go ahead and set that aside for now and then you'll also notice this is the drill attachment and on this piece here is a special sanding foam disc this peels off of here and again you'll save this until towards the end of the process and then what you'll have left here is two different color sanding pads there's an assortment of the same two pads and the the the gold ones here are the ones for step one and the white ones are first step two so we'll set the white ones aside and you'll grab one of these gold ones and go ahead and attach it to this to this drill piece you want to Center it and then press down just like that then we'll take the drill insert it into the drill and tighten it up on the drill and now we'll get going so as you can see I just wet the headlight and wet the pad you always want to keep this wet just so you don't burn through the plastic on the headlight and one other thing I want to mention before I get started is when you're doing this you want to be flat right on the headlight you don't want to be going at an angle with the pad going this way that way you want it to be face to face with the headlight all over the headlight and then once you start moving around you don't want to be doing this this move in a cleaning pattern like that down up down up and work your way around the whole headlight until it's got an even sanding across the whole headlight head to head just like that so that being said let's get started so this is what a good first step would look like a nice even sanding this is one of the most important steps of the whole process because this is the grittiest sandpaper and you want to really get those defects out in this stage and from here on out you're kind of refining it getting it clearer and clearer and clearer so this first step you want it to be hazy you want to get all those bad defects out in this step before moving forward so sand all the way down until you've noticed you got all of the harsh oxidation out there can still be some imperfections because now it's gonna be foggy automatically you just sanded out the imperfections and I'm gonna go ahead and show you a mistake and kind of what I'm talking about here see you down here where the tape is you'll notice I i sanded through one of my layers of tape it's hard to see my camera will not focus but you can kind of see you just kinda manually focus this you can see right there on this area I sanded through the tape through to the silver part of the car so I'm gonna go ahead and add more tape you might want to do more than two layers and I can already tell even here I might be getting close to burning through one layer so I'm gonna dry this off and quick apply another layer of tape and you'll also want to go ahead and kind of wipe off this lens after you've done your first round of sanding to verify there's no crazy pitting or oxidation left but as you can see now it's really hazy but that's the whole point you have to sand out the imperfections before moving on you can even see I don't know if this comes through in the camera there's still a little bit of oxidation here it's not completely smooth hazy you you want to look for a smooth hazy finish that means you're ready to just keep polishing away but there's still some oxidation there so I'm gonna hit that area again put some more tape on and then move on to the next step so now you can see in comparison from the last pass this is getting to be a little bit smoother again same with that area on the bottom I'm gonna go ahead and swap to another of the same gold pads so I'm using the same grit just a new pad they supply you with about six pads so I'd say you'll get about three per headlight I'm on my second pad I'm gonna make one final pass around the whole headlight and then we should be able to move on to the next grit of sandpaper okay now you can see it's got a nice even haze over it compared to the first pass and even the second pass you can no longer see where the oxidation was starting you have no indication of where that was nice even sanding so now we're gonna go ahead and put the one of the white sanding discs on and then do the same exact thing now we've got the white sanding disc on I'm gonna go ahead and get the headlight wet again get the disk wet and we'll start sanding away okay so I just got done with the white sanding which is step two then you'll see the sanding marks are a lot finer so you want to make sure you're getting rid of all the coarse sanding marks and then you can move on from the white sanding pad so I think this looks pretty even I don't see any deep scratches just a lot of fine scratches if you look close it's pretty smooth a lot of fine scratches so now we're gonna move on to the next step which is this thicker foam pad there's only one of these it's a three thousand grit as you can see on the back there and you'll be getting this thing wet and keeping this wet same as we have been in the past and doing a full pass after this we should be able to see a visible difference in the lens now you can see we're really starting to reap the rewards of our hard work here not all the way done obviously but this is with that foam grape ad we were able to get all the sanding scratches out of the headlight and now you've just got a light haze to it so this is looking perfect no more oxidation the lens looks clean we just got to get this thing to its final stage which is going to be using this orange pad here so once you've got through the third stage but this remove the gray pad insert the orange one here and this kit also comes with this rubbing compound so this is kind of the key to creating it a glass finish you put the orange pad on the drill bit and put a dollop of this on and I'll show you how to properly apply that so we can get this thing looking brand new all right I've got the orange pad on the drill and as you can see I've got a couple small pieces of that rubbing compound onto the pad itself and then once you do that you want to go ahead and kind of smear it around the areas you're going to be using it this prevents slinging the compound all over the garage or making a mess and you also don't want any dry spots on the lens so kind of just dab it around a little bit like that work an area at a time and I'll show you guys what this looks like and by the way it's very important before doing this that you wipe the lens clean you do not want any water moisture you do not use water on this step the lens needs to be clean dry so I took a dry shop towel wipe down the whole lens real good no more moisture because you want this pad to stay dry so with that being said let's do the final step and see what see what it's looking like so as you can see with this orange pad that just buff all the remaining haze out of the the lens so it's looking like glass now you can see all the reflections no more hazing that was all over this I'll throw up a picture of what it looked like before just so you guys can remember but it's glass smooth and then the only last step I would recommend is to constantly wax on this because now that we've buffed off the UV coating they could yellow again so you could ceramic coat it and that lasts forever or just put some wax on it once every like six months and you'll be fine but now I can go ahead and I'll take all this tape off and wipe off the bumper you want to spray this off with a hose don't just wipe it off because there's little particles in here and if you rub it in you'll essentially just be sanding your bumper so make sure you just spray that off with water and instead of wiping all that but I'm gonna clean all this up and show you guys the final product and then you'll still have enough materials left over to do the other side the kit comes with enough to do both sides and sometimes even more than that depending on how many passes you make so I love this kit and that was my result so I hope you guys have the same results alright I just pulled the car out of the garage and this is the final result they lookingglass clean I'm super happy with it that's the left one and this is the right one I mean are they perfect no but they are so so so much better than what was in there before with all that oxidation now they're super glossy so the next step actually is to get rid of those orange halos I picked up a set of these luxe H eights which should make those crystal white instead and a lot brighter so I'm pumped to get those in but that's gonna be a separate video so stay tuned and next up you will see these Lux angel eyes in there and you'll see a difference between the yellow and the white so until next time be sure to like this video subscribe and I'll see you next one peace

Channel: Jake Spence

Views: 2,763,610

Rating: 4.8304048 out of 5

Keywords: how to clean headlights, how to restore headlights permanently, headlight restoration, headlight restoration kit, car headlights, headlight lens, foggy headlights, yellow headlights, headlamps, headlight oxidation removal, how to buff headlights, how to polish headlights, clear headlights, how to, diy, best way to clear headlights, best way to clean headlights on a car, 3m headlight restoration system, remove yellow headlight haze, get rid of foggy headlights

Id: nQ02drp4BhE

Length: 16min 15sec (975 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 25 2019