How to restore the original shine of your headlights

As time goes by, some parts of the car gradually lose their original quality and deteriorate. Some need to be replaced after a few thousand kilometres, but others can be restored and brought back to the look they had when the car was new by following a few simple tips.

The headlights are one of those parts that lose their shine and need some maintenance after a few years. Sometimes, owners of cars with clouded headlights feel the need to replace them with new ones, but with a simple and practical maintenance procedure they can recover their clarity and keep being useful for years.

Although they seem very resistant and nothing in the environment appears capable of damaging them, headlights are exposed to thousands of tiny dust particles and other elements that can scratch the surface and make it cloudy over time. The shine of the headlights is considerably reduced and they lose effectiveness, which can become a source of problems when driving at night.

To solve this and make them look new again, they must be polished, using a technique that will leave them as good as new. Normally this is done with an electric polisher, which does the work faster and more efficiently, but it can also be done by hand, with several sheets of sandpaper, anti-scratch liquid and polishing wax.

The sandpaper sheets should be grit 2,500 and 3,000, while the polishing wax should be white. The number on sandpaper represents the size of its grains and its hardness. The higher the number, the finer the grain and the lighter the sanding. First, the 2,500 grit paper is used to carry out wet sanding.

This removes the clouded layer of the headlight and eliminates the deeper scratches, letting more light through. Once that layer is gone, some marks left by the sandpaper will remain, so it is time to use the second sheet, which is finer, to give the headlight a smoother finish.

This process can take around 30 minutes per headlight, but it leaves them smooth and ready for the second phase. Now it is time to pass a damp cloth with the polishing paste, which will cover the micro-scratches that may remain after sanding and leave the headlight smooth and free of any marks that could block the passage of light.

This cloth must be applied with regular circular movements, so that it covers the whole surface of the headlight. This operation ends when the surface of the headlight is completely smooth and feels free of irregularities.

Using another cloth, remove the residue from the previous steps and, once everything is clean, apply the polishing wax and leave it as bright and transparent as the day you first got the car.

With this process, which can be done at home without much trouble, the car’s cloudy headlights will be restored and ready for several more years of good lighting, without having to replace them.

Source | Own production