Restoring 14 Year Old Headlights to GLASS Finish

well the last time that we talked I saw that I was going to do fewer you ninety videos in 2020 and well here we are but with this hub light restoration it's Universal for any cars just let out of the two cars so that I have to work on I think that the BMW headlights are actually in worse condition so um if this process works out the way that I'm hoping I think that you're gonna see a battery before and after with this car so that's the reason that we're working on this today so I just want to start this video by saying that yes there's a hundred different ways so you can do this and there's a hundred different products and I know everyone claims to be the best everyone claims to have the best method or the best product for it but I just saw this at the store I thought I'd try it out it wasn't terribly expensive this is the Maguire's the heavy duty headlight restoration kit so I like these kits because if you're someone like me that's not like a professional detailer it kind of takes the guesswork out of getting everything that you need in just the right amount um if you just want to do your lights a couple times a year or something you don't have to buy like the big 20 ounce bottle of the fluid or like a whole pack of sandpaper or something if you don't already have it so I'll show you what's in this box and we'll get this started so there's a couple different kits that you can get depending on how bad your headlights are I went with the severe kit which includes the sanding block two different grades of sandpaper a wool polishing attachment a bottle of plastics which is like their headlight polishing formula and a bottle of headlight coating so that you can seal the lights when they're done you'll need to provide a water bottle for wet sanding masking tape to protect your bumper and for the heavy duty kit you'll need to drill for polishing start by wiping down the lights with glass cleaner you want the lights to be as clean as possible before you start [Music] mask off the hood and bumper so that you don't accidentally sand or polish your paint so once you got the surface of the headlight clean and you've got everything masked off it's time to start with the wet sanding so you're gonna use the 1,000 grit first it's the more coarse of the two sanding discs that come in the kit so you just want to put that on to your little grip here it's just velcro six on and you want to keep it wet the whole time that you're working that way the the grit doesn't get clogged up with the the plastic that you're removing from the headlight so let's go ahead and get this started [Music] alternate between sanding vertically and horizontally and keep the surface of the light and the same paper saturated with water as you're sanding the water will look milky that's the dead plastic that's being sanded from the surface of the light sort of like dead skin I did several passes with the 1000 grit especially near the top of the light where the fading was the worst I just finished that first step with the more coarse sandpaper and it's a little scary seeing it like this right now with it all hey stuff but I guess it has to get worse before it can get better so now we're gonna switch over to the 3000 grit which is a more fine sandpaper and with this one it's even more important to keep it wet the whole time because this will get clogged really easily so let's go ahead and give this one started again I'm alternating between a horizontal and vertical sanding motion [Music] alright so with the wet sanding done we can start the polishing so you're gonna grab the wool pad and a drill just put that in there and then it says to apply a nickel sized amount of the product directly out to the pad surface so we'll go ahead and do that and then it just says to kind of spread it around with the drill at a low speed at first so we'll do that [Music] try to keep the surface of the polishing pad flat against the headlight you can try alternating the speed of the drill to [Music] so we just finished polishing the other headlight and just for reference this is where we started I want to put the mic in here so you can hear so this is how it was before and this is after wet sanding and polishing once the polishing is complete use the glass cleaner once again to remove any residue from the previous process so once you've got the headlight looking the way that you want you're going to use the included hub leg coating with the applicator pad and this is gonna protect them if that's on the box that's gonna protect them for a year so we'll see how that works out but you're just gonna go from top to bottom just spread it on evenly and then it's got to cure overnight it also says to not let it get on to the paint or any other part of the car so that's why I'm leaving the tape on for the step [Music] just a little FYI here so that you know what to expect the headlight coding kind of has like an oily consistency to it so when you put it on the applicator pad you want to start at the top and gravity will sort of pull it down as you're wiping and you would just want to put it on evenly so that you don't get any drips or runs or anything like that it says on here that it's going to dry to the touch in about 15 minutes at that point I think I'll take the tape off but then you're gonna let it sit overnight before you like drive or wash the car or anything like that so if you're gonna do this project maybe do it in the evening and don't plan to drive the car afterwards well there you have it I'm actually really really impressed with how these came out and really happy with this and like I was saying at the beginning of the video I know that there's like a hundred different methods for restoring headlights I was actually just texting with my friend earlier he's got a different method that he does where he just sands them and then sprays them with a special clear coat he said that that worked really well for his car so maybe we'll try that method on the FRS and we'll just see which one lasts longer but as far as this McGuire's kit by the way this is not sponsored actually bought this at the grocery store believe it or not I think it was like twenty dollars I will link it down below do you want to check it out on Amazon but yeah I'm really happy with how this came out honestly I think the key to this whole project is actually in the drill other kits that I've used in the past or other products they just have you like hand buffing it but this just cuts your time down so much if you think about like 2000 RPM's that you like every minute you're doing this 2,000 times with your hands so the drill just makes your life so much easier it makes this job so much faster so highly recommend that you get one if you don't already have one I know and a lot of my older DIYs people would make fun of me for using hand tools for a lot of car projects I actually just bought this to work on my house but it definitely came in handy today so give me a thumbs up if you enjoyed the video go try it out on your headlights I want to give you guys a little status update here on the garage a lot has changed since you last saw it um the last video that I did in here my dad and I put the ceiling up and the lights and since then we did the walls the walls are about 85% done we ended up coming up a little bit short on the drywall so I have to order a few more sheets of that but yeah it's really coming along it's really starting to look like a garage now I'll show you some of the new tools and toys I guess that I'm using to film these videos so if you like the lighting in my recent videos about a month ago I got this godox SL 60w it is a daylight white LED light and see on the bag it's got like a dimmer switch I just keep it at a hundred percent though then coming around to the front we have a newer I believe this is a 32 inch diffuser so the idea for video lighting is you want a soft light this is diffused over a large surface area so that's why I have that I'm actually thinking about buying a second one of these that way I can keep one in my youtube studio inside my house and then just leave this one set up down here for DIYs this is my kerosene space heater this thing makes working in the garage possible during the winter it's very cold out but it's actually very comfortable and here this thing will actually get warm enough where I can run it for a couple hours and just shut it off and with the walls being insulated now it actually holds the heat pretty well in here as far as the feel for it you can buy this kerosene pretty much any hardware store I haven't really shopped around for it yet but tractor supply sells these thing it's like ten dollars a gallon and for me I've been getting about three days of use out of one of these so you figure about $3 a day approximately to keep the garage really not too bad especially for my usage and it does have a little bit of a smell to it when it's on if you've ever used like one of those old-school Zippo lighters know what it smells like but I do keep that door propped open a little bit for ventilation and of course keep a fire extinguisher nearby a couple weeks ago I got this Canon 35 millimeter f1 point for this likely the older version of the lines but it still holds up even on my newer USR works great and yeah if you follow me on Instagram this is one that I've been using a lot recently for the photos this doesn't zoom and it doesn't have image stabilization so it's kind of limited for video use but for still photos this thing is awesome alright well I hope you guys enjoyed this little garage update the plan is to have the walls in the tape and the mud and everything done sometime next week that way we can start painting get this thing done with it's really coming along though big thanks to my dad for coming over the past few weeks to help me out with this project [Music]

Channel: Justin Buice

Views: 550,974

Rating: 4.9032145 out of 5

Keywords: Justin Buice, BMW, E90, 3 Series, E92, F30, E46, E60, F10, 325i, 335i, BMW Mods, E90 Mods, BMW vlog, automotive vlogs, headlights, headlight restoration, how to restore headlights, how to restore headlights permanently, how to restore headlights with sandpaper, how to polish headlights, how to clean headlights, how to clean faded headlights, how to clean faded headlight lenses, meguiars headlight restoration kit, meguiars headlight coating, meguiars headlight restoration kit heavy duty

Id: 0r32jX8ESdA

Length: 12min 7sec (727 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 07 2020