When cleaning your car’s paintwork, don’t polish the headlights. Polishes with any grit content can wear down the clear coat, making them more susceptible to UV, pollution and marks. If you do want to polish the lights, make sure the product you use doesn’t contain any grit, or use a clear coat sealant spray afterwards to restore the protective coating of the lights. RPM – This is only effective between 1200 – 1600 rpm, fortunately, this is plenty for most house-hold drills. Apart from the 2-in-1 Turtle Wax product, the kits above follow the same procedures for restoring degraded headlights. Once you have everything you need, you will need to: The 3M Headlight Lens Restoration Kit is gives DIY enthusiasts an easy way to repair their vehicle's plastic lens surfaces. The 3M Headlight Lens Restoration Kit contains various graded sanding pads, pad holders, buffing pads, polish and detailed instructions - everything users need to turn their household drill into a low-cost solution to a dangerous automotive problem. If you’re in the market for the best headlight restoration kit you can buy, you can’t do better than 3M 39073 Headlight Lens Restoration Kit. With its ease and effectiveness, this kit does everything you need.

I'm very, very pleased to say it did a perfect job and I now have a 12 year-old headlight that's just as clear and bright as the brand new one. The instructions on this kit are easy to follow, just fit the sanding pad holder to your drill and follow the steps. Within 20 minutes I'd sanded, smoothed, buffed and polished my headlight and that was it. There's comfortably enough sanding discs and rubbing compound for two headlights although I only needed one. Top Headlight Restoration Kits Reviewed How to Keep Your Car Top-Notch with Minimal Stress and Effort: Sanding. All the kits above come with a range of sanding pads with varying degrees of abrasiveness. Follow the instructions in your kit and work your way through the sanding pads, starting with the most abrasive through to the least. Both the sandpaper and headlights should be wet during the sanding process to keep the plastic cool and prevents grit build-up as you sand. Take your time and be fussy. Tape around the edges of the headlights. This is very important because the tape will protect surrounding paintwork from sanding pads that accidentally stray from the headlight.Took 15 minutes per headlight to restore to absolutely like new. Amazing. It also cleaned up all the horrid mess I'd made from my previous unsuccessful attempts. There's enough left to do another set.” To make maintaining your headlights easier, we narrowed the competition down to the top three headlight restoration kits you can get. The Autoglym Headlight Restoration Complete Kit is our third choice, and is a great device for drivers looking an effective solution to their headlights without a massive price tag. You don’t have to pay for expensive garage services to keep your car running to a safe and efficient standard. The 3M 39073 Headlight Lens Restoration Kit is simply the headlight restoration kit you can buy today, offering comfortable easy application, speed, and minimal fuss. The speed, convenience, and effectiveness is why 3M’s 39073 takes our top spot. Here are some of the benefits and weaknesses of the 3M 39073 restoration kit: Pros: Clear Instructions – The instructions are laid out cleanly and clearly; anyone will be able to succeed just by reading through the steps.

Dirt and pollution can change the appearance of plastic car headlights over time, when a thin layer builds up on the surface. This opaque layer of dirt diffuses and dims the light, interfering with the strength and direction of the main beam. Have a 14 year old Passat that looks and drives very well. Although the bodywork is good, the garage said at the last MOT that the headlights lenses were cloudy and it may fail next time. So, after some researching, decided to buy the Autoglym Kit. Arrived promptly and after reading the instructions, attached the abrasive discs to my drill and started carefully moving the drill up and down and sideways across the lenses. The lenses felt much smoother and after making sure all the scratches had gone, put on the restoring compound and like before, went across and up and down the lenses making sure the pad was kept moist at all times by spraying it with water. Cleaned with the microfibre cloth provided and was amazed. They were like new and very bright when I put them on full beam.” Clean the headlights when washing the rest of your car to remove abrasive grit and acidic matter, such as bird poo. It makes any car look scruffy even if the paintwork is shiny. It will also make the headlamps less effective, dazzle other motorists and could even be an MoT failure.

It’s not nonsense either, as the whitening element can remove yellowing in the plastic just as it does on your teeth. Meanwhile the fine particles in the paste act as a gentle abrasive to polish the dull surface.

If you are confident with a drill and have badly-tarnished lenses, we’d recommend the Holts kit – it’s great value and gave a decent result. Read moreAre your car’s headlights starting to show signs of age, wear and tear? Maybe they look a little cloudy, yellow or just aren’t as bright as they used to be? If this is the case, it’s worth restoring them, as you could fail your MOT if the problem is causing issues with visibility and your view of the road. Given Autoglym’s reputation we expected good things from this kit and we weren’t disappointed. The instructions were the clearest and there’s even an online video to help if you are unsure. The longer we drive our cars, the more likely our headlights are to become hazy and scratched. Aside from looking messy, this can mean less light at night, and make driving more dangerous. But fixing this problem doesn’t have to mean stress and expense.