I decided that after taking the time to black out the housings i wanted to rid the lenses of any scratches, chips, or road kill.

1. Started out rough with a wet 600 grit hand sanding.

2. Got a hold of some 1000 grit and did the same, followed by 2000. All wet of course. White film covered the headlights and took it off with a towel.

3.Bought a Skil Orbital sander/buffer that runs at 12,000 OPM and buffed the living hell out of them with meguire's platic polish and cleaner. Still the headlights look like this....(one is untouched for comparrison)














Its really hard to tell from the pictures but im sure you get the idea.

 

Looks like you dun F'd up.

Maybe the 12,000 rpm buffer created too much heat on the plastic lenses.

Bummer, good idea though and good luck getting it fixed. New headlights are spensive!

 

try using some of the polish by hand and see if it clears it up.
You may have to go over it quick with the 2k grit in case the buffer heated up it up too much and left an outside :layer".
I did the headlights on my 1G back in the day wet sanding with 600, 800, 1200grit and then used Meguirs scratch-X with good results. Since you did the final sand with 2K and used actual plastic polish, they should have come out much better.

 

Ok ill give that a try

 

You should try some 3M extra cut rubbing compound, then finish it off with the glaze.

 

I would not do this.
I have a refinishing wing tread. I have done this before.
Use a foam pad. You need to polish the lenses more. The fine scatches cause what you see...the haze. You want to keep polishing with some pure carnuba. Something really smooth.


This stuff works...http://www.lensrenew.com/
Basically the same as what you have. You really need to polish the lenses with a foam pad. Check it out. Comes with what you need.

 

Shoulda threw some D's on it.

 

What direction were you hand wet-sanding each layer?

You should sand in opposite directions for each different grit level in order to avoid oversanding specific spots.

Also, make sure you clean off the headlights really well between each sanding layer.


BTW, from your pics it looks like your headlights have paint overspray.

I know it's not but that's what it looks like.

 

And this is why i sent mine to EvoDave.

 

Thats just some polish that flew off the buffer and ended up on the other lens.

I sanded horizontally against the lens or "the long way" on both grits.

Is this something i can take to a local body shop and have them buff out if i feel like giving up?

 

dammn that sux. diy gone wrong

 

Using the mirror Glaze shouldn't have done that, my guess is it would be in you wet sanding technique. The idea of wet sanding is to remove a layer of clearcoat, and im sure u went right into the plastic with the wet sanding which gave you those results.

Thats my guess. Sorry to hear it didn't work out as you planned!

 

The meguiar's polishes are not abrasive enough, use some Menzerna IP and FPII with polishing pads.