Polish for plastic lights

Actually, you'd want the clear to be applied to as smooth a surface as
possible. Underlying scratches get magnified (or at least to the eye they
appear more exaggerated) by clear coat. The clear should adhere just fine
to a glass smooth surface. The difference here between what a polish does
and what clear does is that the polish fills the fine scratches with an
opaque substance that hides them. Over time it washes out and the scratches
seem to re-appear. With clear, you'd fill them with a clear substance which
would hold up to washes and wear much longer, but would show those
scratches. You can see this in re-paints on cars often. If the primer was
not sanded with a fine enough paper, or if it was used as a filling primer
and subsequently shrinks some, you'll see scratches in the underlying
primer, through the clear coat.

 

A friend told me he found some stuff at Wal-Mart and did the lenses
on his Voyager. Worked well, but took a LONG time. He said he
pulled the light off and spent a whole night of TV just rubbing away.
But they came out pretty darn good.

Anyway, I found this stuff called PlastX at Wal-Mart and I'm going
to give it a try. Probably on the Intrepid first, since that's the worst
of the two cars. In reading the bottle it says there's an 'oil' in the
stuff that soaks in as well as a polishing agent.

 

If any of you have a marine/boat store around, try using '210 Plastic
Polisher' There is a paste, '210 plus' for the deep scratches and the
spray to polish it. Stuff is fantastic and a little goes a long way.
Headlights get it bad here in Florida

b

 

I've had pretty good success with the PlastX on my 2000 Intrepid headlights,
which were getting fairly cloudy. You'll need to apply it every couple of
weeks, but it did make a difference.

YMMV, or course.

 

Toothpaste will work..

 

For very light hazing. Anything more than that, and it would take you
many hours to get one headlight polished out. Sometimes sandpaper is
literally necessary to get it done in anything close to reasonable time.

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')

 

Mechanical buffing will tend to overheat and melt the plastic. Go by hand
with a 1200 black emery paper wet.
L.G.R.

 

Properly used, a buffer won't harm the plastic. It is a tool though that
requires more than just pulling the trigger and laying it into the
workpiece. For those not needing, nor wanting to master a buffer, those
fairly cheap home quality buffers available at Sears, Wal-Mart, etc. do just
fine. They don't spin fast enough to generate that much heat. You can
indeed burn through clear coat with one, but you really have to stay on a
point for a while to do so. They'd be fine for even the most inexperienced
to use without damaging the lens.

 

The polish at WalMart works perfectly - even for a non-mechanical guy like
me. My headlights look like brand new.

 

If you say so.
L.G.R.

 

I polish them with my buffer all of the time. I use a real auto body buffer
and not one of those cheap ones I mentioned in my post. Never melted or
damaged a single lens.

 

Thanks. I will try that nex time.
L.G.R.