How to Restore Headlights PERMANENTLY!

on this episode of paint society we're gonna remove 15 years of oxidation in just minutes using your basic hand tools let's power up and get this started as we learn tricks of the trade on how to remove all the oxidation from your headlights and then seal it in with a uv protection clear coat out of a can can these headlights possibly clear up before our eyes and be restored to oem quality let's find out right now what's going on everyone and welcome back to another episode of paint society the channel where the learning doesn't stop when the video ends coming to you from the home garage i always feel a special connection to my diy guys sitting in the garage wanting some projects that they can do with just basic tools well we have the project for you today so the project today is to clear up these foggy old headlights in our own home garage using a variety of basic tools that you can get online or at your local store so eagle abrasives has a job pack and it comes in three grits and this is the k grit now we learned about the k grit that it can do all the work that the p grit can do in half the time and i like it because it comes with its own hand pad and three grits that will work to clear up the headlights nice and easy before we go ahead and clear coat so your next question is brian why can't i just go ahead and buff the lights while you can do that the problem is buffing is not protecting all it's really doing is making it look good it's kind of like a band-aid right so what we're doing in this episode on this project is we're sanding off all that oxidation getting rid of all of it then we're putting a clear coat on now the same type of clear coat that will come out of a paint gun but in a can and what that's going to do it's going to ensure that the lights are uv project protected so they don't fade for a good amount of time and then we have our clear coat from eastwood now i know you guys love these clear coats because they're two part they're 2k this is not the common aerosol clear coat okay it actually has two parts where it releases the catalyst into the actual spray paint and from there it's a ticking time bomb of around one to two days before it starts to kick now the good thing about this is it has a uv resistance that you would not get from a regular rattle can and we don't need an air compressor to spray it so next up i want to talk about safety first before we move any further you want to make sure you're wearing your gloves and i really mean this also your respirator okay it's very important that you're not breathing in any of the harmful isocyanates that are in this can this is a 2 k products so it does have those isocyanates in them and they are very very harmful uh when you breathe in so make sure you guys are taking care of yourself and make sure you're wearing a paint suit as well so we have a variety of cleaners right here and we'll talk about how we're going to use them now you don't need all three but i do like to use a degreaser to start off the job just to make sure all contaminants are off so it doesn't clog up my sandpaper then along the way in between sanding we can use some glass cleaner this will help pull off all that content all those contaminants from the surface so you have a nice clean job in the end and to pull them off we'll use a microfiber towel guys you know i like microfiber because it does not get soggy and it kind of pulls the contaminants off a lot better and last but not least we have our tape now you don't need both sizes but if you do it's going to help you out we have three quarters and we have inch and a half if you're gonna get one i suggest three quarters because it's easier to get in between the headlight and the panel okay now i have this on a tape thing that just makes things a lot easier but you don't need it but if you're a painter you know how good these units are and last but not least we have the plastic for covering the car now you can simply go ahead to walmart or home depot and just get the pack of the drop cloth plastic that will work fine but if you do plan on doing um painting in your garage or painting in general this automotive plastic actually has a side that's treated you can see it says paint this side or this side up that means that this side the plastic is treated to actually hold the over spray so overspray will stick to it right rather than flaking on if you have time in between a job so a good tip i know that's a big question amongst a lot of my viewers so let's go ahead and let's get started on the car so let's go ahead and first talk about the reason why it's oxidizing and what we can expect as a result of clearing these up now if we take a look at the headlight right here we can see that the clear layer of uv protection from the factory is very thin and it doesn't last very long and it's been peeling and peeling it's very important that we remove all the uv protection that the factory has put on and we take it down to bare plastic and to do that we really need to hit it hard now if you take a look in this area we can see minor minor minor cracks now some of these cracks will not go away they're within the plastic but it will look a lot better now the first thing we need to do is tape it up once again what i like about the tape thing is it sticks to the car now i'll go around with my inch and a half just to make sure that i don't go ahead and sand onto the bumper now we're not taking the headlights out because we want to do the easiest job possible sometimes it's hard for us to learn how to take out a bumper we don't want to break anything and if we have a decent enough gap around here then it's not going to be a problem to run some tape now we'll go ahead and use our super clean foaming degreaser and this is going to help remove any of the contaminants so our sandpaper doesn't clog we'll let it sit for a few moments so just for a few moments you can see all of that yellow coming off already the headlight is already looking ten times better do i even need to continue doing this project yes of course because i need to make sure that i am clear coating and getting all the oxidation completely off so let's go ahead and move on so we have our kit here now let's talk about where we start now there's a total of four sheets these cut in half we break them in half we can stick them right onto our hand pad now this is k-600 this is equivalent to p320 i told you guys how important the first step is we need to remove all this oxidation because the higher grits are just refining it they will not remove it we need to refine this scratch in coming steps that way the clear can fall into tinier scratches and not coarse ones that way it's nice and clear so there's not much to it other than just a little bit of labor and you'll be able to see that our yellow is coming right off now don't be scared it's gonna get worse it's gonna look a lot worse before it looks better now in between coats to see what's going on we'll use some of that spray away glass cleaner now we can see here a line of the old uv that's still there the whole top has lost it but we need to make sure this line is removed okay so to remove this line this whole area right here still has the uv protection because the top of the headlight is where the sun really focuses on and breaks it down if we do not remove all this clear coat in this area you will see this line when you go to spray it so you need to take the time now and you really need to remove everything that you see because it will still be there later on almost gone you can see how it's still shiny right in this area don't stop sanding you're almost there we'll go ahead and clean off once more and we want to make sure we're using the glass cleaner because it's less abrasive in between coats okay okay so we got all of that outer factory uv uh coating off now you might ask why can't i just use a mac lacquer thinner or a middle spirits well what that's going to do is it's going to eat out the plastic we don't want to do that take your time and two sheets of that k600 will take it off and i've got to say it's already leaving it in a better state than a peak grit would i already can see it's got a shine to it a little bit which is a great great sign that these are going to clear up really nice so once your k-600 is done we'll go ahead and jump to the k800 now this is equivalent to a p 500 so two easy steps and we're ready to clear and this is just refining at this point there should not be any more oxidation on the headlight if you still see some you need to go ahead and clear it up in the k 600 grit not the k800 once that k800 is all sanded then we'll go ahead and wipe them clean now just for reference i used two sheets of my k 600 and one sheet of my k800 primarily because the k-600 is doing most of the work and uh eating up all that oxidation k-800 is just refining it now from here this one is good i'll go ahead and pull off my tape i don't want any contaminants in front of tape dust getting onto the head like one might go spray it and i'll go ahead to the other side and get that one done real quick [Music] so so we're gonna go ahead and jump back to this side now we're gonna go ahead and tape up the headlight now i'm using an inch and a half because i feel like the gaps are a little bit bigger and easier to use inch and a half on this particular vehicle but remember all cars are a little bit different now i'll put all the product links in the description so you can pick up the tape just like this or the plastic or any products that you see today get the job done a pocket screwdriver really helps to get that tape into all those crevices now that we've bordered out our headlights let's get our plastic and pull it over the car verify that paint this side is facing upwards that way the over spray sticks to it then go ahead and take your tape and overlap plastic to the original tape that you had and once it's all masked up it should look something like this now since the hood really overlaps the headlight we needed to prop it up so i used a stick to prop it up in the meantime so it doesn't shut while we're spraying now it might not be the prettiest tape job but it makes sure that no overspray will get onto the car or get into the engine bay now to ensure that your plastic is not going to go anywhere go ahead and tape it up here's how we tape it up in the back just take a whole plastic together and put a piece of tape around it so we are ready for our clear coat let me show you how this can works it's not like any other aerosol remember it's got the kylis built into it so this is the same type of paint that comes out of a spray gun put into an aerosol take the cap off remove the red cap from the top cap then we're going to go ahead and fix it to the stem now you have to give it a good amount of pressure you're going to hear a pop once you hear that pop we've now broken the bladder inside of the can and now what's happening is we can release that catalyst into the rest of the clear coat by shaking it we'll shake it up for two to three minutes and it's good to go now it's good to go but before that remember our paint suit and our respirator are very important now once more right before we go to spray our clear coat we'll go ahead and we'll get a final cleaning now i'm using a different microfiber not the same that we used in the beginning we're now ready to clear now you might ask why are we skipping the adhesion promoter well i don't like using the adhesion promoter on headlights because it really etches into the plastic and i've used it before and it's been bad news it'll etch and almost melt the plastic and you need to sand it all the way starting back with the k600 once again and we're not getting ourselves into that we have a k 800 grit scratch on here and that's more than enough for our clear coat stick all we'll do is run a tack rag over the surface and then we're ready to spray our first coat will be very very light now you'll notice that it looks foggy don't worry that will clear up that is just a characteristic of using an aerosol can so don't go crazy allow it to clear up in just a few moments now we just sprayed our passenger side and in real time if we jump back to our driver's side we can see it's already starting to look really clear let's leave it for about a good five to six minutes so it's been five to six minutes now what's happening on that first coat now that first coat is tacking up and it's becoming glue so the second coat we can go a little bit wetter but not too wet okay now that looks pretty foggy let's hit time lapse and let's watch it clear up [Music] so the headlight once it's cleared has dried additional two hours and we're ready to remove the tape there's no reason to take off the tape right away we'll go ahead and do that now and there we have it a beautiful headlight that's been restored in our home garage using a rattle can and now i know your next question is can we buff it if we need to well the good thing is i left a little area here just a touch orange peely that way i can demonstrate the buffing process using the k 1200 grit and polish but first let's allow this to dry a good 12 hours before we sand and buff it so we allow the headlights to dry overnight approximately 12 plus hours and they're ready to get sanded and buffed so do you really need to sand and buff your headlights well let's first clear up something sanding and wet sanding are the same thing the only difference is you would use water as a lubricant now this is a very good sandpaper so it doesn't need water it will cut by itself and i prefer dry sanding because you can see what you're doing now in the case of these headlights really they look fine but for the video we'll go ahead and sand a small area just to show you guys how you can buff your headlight in case yours came out a little bit orange really so this is the k1200 now the k1200 is still a touch aggressive so we're not going to really rub it in hard we're going to allow the sandpaper to do the work for us in this area right here we have a little bit of orange peel which will be more evident once we sand it once i pan over this area you can see that the texture is a little bit orange pilly it's really not that bad what our focus is we want to remove that orange peel so we'll keep on doing this until it is smooth and consistent like the rest of the headlight now we don't need to do this to the whole headlight if we want to we can but only to the areas that need it we can see that the clear coat does powder up nicely and a good indication that this clear coat really builds up mills and gives you a good uv resistance we'll go ahead and wipe it down and just like that we're ready to go ahead and buff it's really that easy so i have this polex polish two in one from eagle abrasives and the reason why i like it is because it's a polishing compound it does the job of two in one bottle so here's when doing the job by hand just kind of stops we don't have enough friction within our hand to create that shine and bring back that shine because our hand just cannot spin fast enough so when we go to buff it with the towel it's still going to be dull as you can see it's still dull here you will need the added assistance of a buffer i have a mini buffer that i love from milwaukee and we have a medium coarse buffing pad on there to go ahead and bring that shine up this pad with the actual movement and friction created by this buffer will create heat to bring back up that shine [Music] uh just a few moments later the shine is completely restored so the only downside to have a beautifully restored headlight is you get to see what's settled in your headlights for 10 to 15 years in this case we have a little spider and some other insects but usually you can take some air from the back through one of the holes whether it's the high beam or the low beam and you can move it around actually it will go somewhere else as you don't see it that's a little bit less desirable not in the front of the headlight and there you have it our project is complete now if you're wondering how long the work time was it's approximately about two hours now let's talk about how long these headlights are last if you've done the work well they should last a lifetime if you have not done if you refine them too much or didn't get enough of debris off in a lower grit you might not get as long because that paint does not adhere properly to the actual headlight this coating on this headlight is a hundred times better than the coating it came with from the factory so i hope that you learned something and i would love to see your projects guys if you want to support the channel and go ahead and pick yourself up paint society's shirt rumor has it when you wear this shirt that's been touched by yours truly when it's packed the powers translate from my hands to yours through the paint gun until then this is brian from paint society reminding you don't overthink it it's just pain let's check out some before and afters do [Applause] you

Channel: Paint Society

Views: 770,027

Rating: 4.9087677 out of 5

Keywords: headlight, restore, diy, garage, home, copart, build, fix, clear, sand, buff, new, repair, collision, paint, accident

Id: Xubwpeuqm-E

Length: 21min 13sec (1273 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 25 2020