smart51
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| posted on 23/1/10 at 04:56 PM |
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polishing plastic headlight lenses
There are a couple of slight scratches on the plastic headlights of my car. Is cerium oxide (glass polish) too abrasive? Otherwise, what am I best
using?
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liam.mccaffrey
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| posted on 23/1/10 at 04:57 PM |
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I'd be interested to know also, I have ruined a usable plastic lens doing this in the past 
[Edited on 23/1/10 by liam.mccaffrey]
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matt_gsxr
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| posted on 23/1/10 at 05:06 PM |
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Brasso or equivalent metal polish is quite good for plastics (faces of Swatches for example). Very gentle and slow as it works just like a very fine
grinding paste.
Try on an out of the way patch first, as they always say.
Matt
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David Jenkins
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| posted on 23/1/10 at 05:07 PM |
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I use Farecla G3 (the paint polishing stuff) on my Yaris headlamp plastics, to brighten them up (they go all hazy over time).
Brings them up all sparkly and clean.
[Edited on 23/1/10 by David Jenkins]
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COREdevelopments
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| posted on 23/1/10 at 05:17 PM |
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as above g3 is perfect along with a good buffer
Rob
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smart51
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| posted on 23/1/10 at 05:28 PM |
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lovely. I have some G3 and a mop. That's tomorrow afternoon sorted.
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austin man
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| posted on 23/1/10 at 07:00 PM |
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you can also use wet and dry use p1000 and p1200 followed by brasso the will look as good as new, I used to polish damage out of plastics as part of
my job. The buffer may cause more damage so buff on a low speed. I have even used a piece of cardboard before for the final stage of polishing
Life is like a bowl of fruit, funny how all the weird looking ones are left alone
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bimbleuk
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| posted on 23/1/10 at 07:01 PM |
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Probabaly depends on the plastic but I've spent an hour on each of my Laguna lenses. I used one of the cheap ebay/stall polishing kits with the
polishing mops which attach to a drill. I used the medium compound to flatten the surface then the finishing compound to polish.
They were in a terrible state with very obvious surface crazing you could feel. I showed them to someone who had seen them before and they asked how
much they had cost to replace 
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smart51
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| posted on 23/1/10 at 09:41 PM |
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Thanks all. C3 and the polisher have done the trick.
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Angel Acevedo
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| posted on 24/1/10 at 11:36 AM |
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Helicopter Windshield polish
Too late for you, but for everybody else, I used to have summer jobs while still a student, and I remember a product used to polish Plastic Helicopter
windowsw and windshields.
I can´t recall the name of it, that was quite a while ago.....
Beware of what you wish.. for it may come true....
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Mark Allanson
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| posted on 24/1/10 at 11:47 AM |
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Don't use anything amonia based (Brasso), it will attack the plastic and make it cloudy.
At work, insurance companies will pay us 50% of the value of a headlamp if we can repair it. If a plastic lens is scraped, we get it flat with
anything from 120g upwards, wet flat and finish with G3 in a polishing mop.
It is quite a good deal on, say an Audi TT, the headlaps are over £800 each!
If you can keep you head, whilst all others around you are losing theirs, you are not fully aware of the situation
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