If your car is more than a few years old, it’s likely your headlight lenses are cloudy and scratched. Thus hindering their ability to shine bright for you to see at night. Don’t worry. You don’t have to buy new headlight housings to fix this problem.
You can restore your old headlights. With headlight restoration cost around $50 or much less for materials and your time, versus $100 minimum for a new headlight housing. It’s well worth the headlight restoration cost compared to replacing the housings.
What you need to restore your headlights
Before we talk about headlight restoration costs, we need to look at what it takes to restore headlight lenses.
The plastic headlight housing gets scratched up from everyday driving. Dust and dirt in the air hitting that plastic at 30-75 MPH will do a lot of damage. Sort of like slowing sandblasting your headlight lenses. This means you need to sand out all the scratches and polish the lenses. Depending on how bad they are, will depends on how much time and effort it will take.
You’re going to need a few different grits of sandpaper, and some sort of polishing/ rubbing compound. At minimum. Of course, a power drill and sanding discs can make this a lot easier and faster.
Restoration Kits VS buying components
You can definitely go out and buy a couple of sheets of 1500 and 3000 grit sandpaper. Plus a polishing wheel and polish for your drill. Or, you can buy a kit that has everything you need.
Buying components
It’s hard to buy just a single sheet of very fine sandpaper for really cheap. Thus the cheapest way to get the various grits of sandpaper you need in an assortment package. This means you’ll spend $10-20 on at least half a dozen pieces of sandpaper and only use 2-4 of them. Then you still have to get the polishing wheel and polish. A polishing wheel is $10-15, and can of polish starts at $5. This means you’ll have $25-45 in materials.
Buy a kit
When you buy a kit, everything you need except the drill comes in the kit. Most of the time you can get enough to do at least a couple of sets of headlights. Unlike having to buy a huge selection of sandpaper you only get what you will use. Thus you aren’t wasting money on things you’ll never use. Since kits run between $10 for a cheap one to $30 for a really nice kit. Like the kit, Mothers offers, that even comes with a polishing ball. You save money on buying a kit.
Other Costs
Of course, the cost of materials isn’t the only headlight restoration cost. It does take time to clean up and restore your headlights. If you do it by hand it takes even more time. You must sand and polish the whole headlight cover, till it’s clear. This can take 30-45 minutes a side, depending on the size of the headlight.
If you get a kit with a drill attachment you can cut this time in over half. Although, now you need to figure in the cost of a drill if you don’t already have one. It really comes down to what you’re time is worth and if you have a drill already. These things all add up to what you’re total headlight restoration cost will be. Especially if you value your time heavily.
Restoration over Replacement
If you are opposed to spending an hour of your time to clean up and polish your headlight lenses, there is an alternative. You can buy new housings from somewhere like CarParts.com or Auto Parts Warehouse. The problem is that the cost of even one new headlight lens will be $100 or more, depending on your car.
Of course, you may find both cheaper but you get what you pay for. If you didn’t like the work it takes to polish your lenses then you will hate how much effort it will take to replace the whole housing. Many times you have to take half the grill and radiator support a part to change them out. This means if you don’t want to polish the lenses then you won’t want to replace the headlight housings. Thus leading to even more costs.
How to Restore Headlight Lenses
If you bought a kit all the directions you need to restore your headlights will come with the kit. Of course, if you choose to buy sandpaper and do it without a kit here are the simple steps.
Start by masking off the body around your headlight. Then wet down the headlight cover with water. Starting with a sandpaper no rougher than 1000 grit sand the housing until it looks uniform in color. Most likely it will look cloudier but less yellow. Do not worry about this. After that go to a finer sandpaper, like 3000 grit. Do the same thing. You will notice the headlight is looking clearer. Once it looks as uniform as you can get it. Go ahead and switch to a rubbing compound or polishing compound and keep at it until your headlight is clear and shiny. It’s that easy.
Almost all kits you get will have the same general instructions. Although they may not all have the exact same grit of sandpaper. In all reality, you could just use a polishing compound and get the same results but it will take a lot longer to get there. Especially if you have very cloudy lenses. When using a drill make sure not to stay in one spot very long as you don’t want to burn the plastic or make one spot to thin. Make sure you use lots of water to keep things clean and cooled off.
End Results and added safety
The end result of less than an hour’s worth of work is brighter headlights. This leads to being able to see better while driving after dark. Which means you are driving safer.
Normal people wouldn’t drive around after dark with their headlights off. So why drive around with clouding headlight lenses giving you half the light you really need? Of course, if you still don’t believe that the headlight restoration cost it worth it.
Watch this video I did, when I restored my wife’s car headlights. You will understand how $20 for a kit and the twenty minutes I spent was well worth its cost. With the added bonus of replacing the headlights with LED bulbs her 18-year-old car now has headlights as bright as many of the high-end luxury cars do brand new. Without the $80,000 price tag of a new car.
If the slight cost of restoring your headlights still seems high. Think about it as just another bit of maintenance you need to do on an older car. It’s always worth the money to be safe.
