Time to restore my headlights again! My car is now 20 years old, the headlights are still original. Over the years, they’d gotten very, very, very yellowed and cloudy. By summer 2019, it’d gotten so bad I could barely see when driving at night even with the high beams on! Back in summer 2019, replacement headlights would have run me about $75 each/$150 total, which to me is freakin’ ridiculous.
Although I’d never heard of headlight refinishing before, I decided to research ideas on how to uncloudy headlights and came across lots of information about how to refinish headlights. I probably spent an entire weekend reading reviews on various kits and blog posts about DIY headlight restoration. I ultimately decided to try using a headlight restoration kit. It took 4 hours of sanding but what a difference it made – my headlights looked brand new, maybe better than new! Three years later, my headlights have become cloudy again although nowhere near as bad as it was back in 2019. It’s time to restore them again, but this time, it only took an hour!
Funny how the color of my car shifted as the sun moved over the course of the day as I worked on the headlights. Obviously, my car needs a wash!
I need to do a bit more polishing on them, but I feel safe to drive at night again!
In 2019, I used the Sylvania Headlight Restoration Kit, which is still available in stores and online/Amazon. I definitely recommend the kit as I got 3 years of clear headlights before they started getting hazy again! I probably could have gone longer if I took a bit of time every now and then to lightly refinish the headlights by doing a light sanding and putting a thin clear coat on them. As it is, I did absolutely nothing to my headlights for the last 3 years other than occasionally cleaning them. For the $15 I paid at the time (2019) and a few hours of work, this kit is most definitely a great value.
This time (June 2022), I used the Mothers NuLens kit, which is a bit different from the Sylvania kit. The NuLens kit doesn’t include any etching fluid or any clear coat. Instead of a clear coat, it includes a bottle of liquid headlight polish, which I think is very similar to regular car polish. The Sylvania kit comes with several pieces of sandpaper while the NuLens kit includes a quite nice small sanding disc that’s attached to a hand drill along with appropriate sanding discs and a separate buffing disc made out of a tight foam sponge like material. I paid $10 for the kit at Walmart. As I can use the sanding and buffer attachments for other projects, I consider this kit a very good value.
However, good value or not, I strongly suspect the headlight restoration I just did using the NuLens kit won’t last near as long as the restoration I did with the Sylvania kit. My headlights are clear again, yes, but they just don’t feel quite as um, not sure how to describe it … maybe new? … as they did after the restoration I did with Sylvania kit. They also don’t look quite as crystal-clear as the Sylvania kit got them – you can see there’s still a slight cloudy/haze even though they are clear. Maybe I needed to sand more … not sure … but really, I do think the clear coat is what really makes the difference. I’ll have to research what clear paints out there are safe to use on plastic headlights!
Quick update a few weeks later:
I’ve driven the dark and winding roads near me at night a few times since I wrote the above and there’s a definite massive improvement to my headlight’s field of vision. I feel so much safer driving at night, but I know it can be better! I still haven’t looked into clear paints/clear coats to use, but for now, I figure I should get at least a solid year of clear vision before I need to refinish them again. By then, I should have found a good clear coat. I don’t mind the few hours of work especially when you consider completely replacing these headlights would now run around $85 each!
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