What am I doing?

[rowhard]

How did you protect them Maverick?

Not sure how Ashley did, but I went to my local tint shop and had them covered in lexan after I had sanded and polished them. Still crystal clear after 7 years and rock chip resistant

[SlowPro48]

Alcohol is fine, the degreaser you're using might be OK as well - depending on what's in it - hopefully no ammonia - but I definitely wouldn't use GooGone, Goof Off or any other solvent to clean those lenses! Polycarbonate is a very solvent-sensitive plastic and it doesn't tolerate NH3, terpenes or aromatics well at all. GooGone is made with citrus-based terpenes - and Goof Off reeks of xylene, which is an aromatic. Your headlights may look good for a while if you keep waxing them to fill in the surface imperfections but eventually the crazing will get bad enough that it scatters too much light and there's no fixing that - they will be ruined.

Anything gentle enough not to harm the plastic is not going to dissolve the remnants of the old clearcoat. So you have to sand those sections anyway. It won't take much longer to go ahead and sand the whole thing. Then polish and clearcoat and you're good to go for another ten years of sparkly, maintenance-free headlight bliss. The key is protecting them with a good UV resistant clearcoat. If you don't, you'll be re-doing the job in a couple years.

[JoFotoz]

X2...

It won't take much longer to go ahead and sand the whole thing. Then polish and clearcoat and you're good to go for another ten years of sparkly, maintenance-free headlight bliss. The key is protecting them with a good UV resistant clearcoat. If you don't, you'll be re-doing the job in a couple years.

I havent clearcoated, but a good all over sanding with 1500 wet & dry..
....although kind of scary at first (cloudy / hazy mess!) is IMO the way to go
to remove original coating.

Follow this with a good mechanical buffing (drill/sponge buff pad)..
...using liberal amounts of Mequiars "PlastX".

We did two VX's a couple of weeks ago...took about an hour.
Mine had been done 3 years ago, the other VX, never.
They both look like new.

After this...15 mins with the buffer and PlastX every year
will keep them pristine

Jo

[SlowPro48]

Yeah that'll work too! I'm just lazy I guess. I'd rather spend an hour on three coats of clear (most of which is cleaning the gun) and not have to think about it again for a long while than spend 15 minutes every year polishing. Definitely agree on finishing up with 1500 grit. Makes the polishing go much quicker....

[SlowPro48]

Not sure how Ashley did, but I went to my local tint shop and had them covered in lexan after I had sanded and polished them. Still crystal clear after 7 years and rock chip resistant

Wha...? They installed a Lexan cover/guard or are you saying they somehow coated your headlights with Lexan?

[rowhard]

Wha...? They installed a Lexan cover/guard or are you saying they somehow coated your headlights with Lexan?

No, he actually took a sheet of lexan, cut and molded it to the headlight. There are a few bubbles around the horn bump but that's it, just like if you bought them pre-cut. I would suggest cutting around the horn light if I was going to do it again