Cleaning up cloudy yellow headlights

I used Wipe New last year in our 2010 and got similar results .

For $10 on Amazon, it’s another cost effective solution.

Remove the haze to ensure you have the best chance of seeing things possible.

 

Looks like I have yet another item on my to-do-list for the next week

 

How's it holding up Ray? If it's not to hard to do, and a redo every year or two is enough, maybe it's the solution.

 

Seems to be ok:


I left a strip on the passenger side for comparison (or so I say):


I’m contemplating doing it again next spring as it’s getting cloudy again.

But for $9 and an hours labor, every 2 years ain’t too bad.

 

As I understand it, the lenses are coated during production for UV protection and this is what yellows over time (coating quality differs obviously). Remove the coating with an abrasive and the lens itself has no protection from UV.

It's still better to have unprotected, but clear headlamp lenses, than protected obscured ones.

 

Good tips, thanks for sharing! I use the Chris Fix Method (see YouTube) which is basically the same, but adding a layer of ClearCoat will help prevent the plastic yellowing in the future!

 

Yea, I just wish I would have cleaned and coated mine when I had the housings out to replace the bulbs. I just don't have the motivation to go thru that again

 

Is there some techinical reason they can't make headlight housings out of glass? Too expensive? Too fragile? Not sure, but seems like they would last better.

 

They would withstand UV factors better.

That’s why the windshield is a composite. Other panes are glass though .

Unless you want to have the old cages or electrical tape affixed to the lease to keep it together when the inevitable happens.

 

One word.... WEIGHT.

Lenses the size of those on modern cars would weigh a TON. The headlamp "modules" on most modern vehicles weigh about the same as a single old glass hi/low bean headlamp, or even less.

 

I miss old glass headlights. Universal, cheap, easy to replace, did NOT yellow, worked fine. One of the banes of modern technology is it's geared toward sales and manufacturing efficiency. No one seems to give a damn about repair.....and just about everything needs repair sometime.

 

Yeah that's where I was going.

 

If people would just hand wax these once in awhile they'd never "yellow up" to begin with. Thing is, not many people hand wax their vehicles anymore.

 

Most "wax" does not provide much UV protection and those that do, offer substantially less than the coating *should* provide. Commercially available coatings can keep lenses clear for well over a decade even at the exposure levels in AZ.

Problem is, the owner or OEM won't know the vendor skimped until it is way too late.

But yes, wax will help and I am pretty sure aggressive chemical cleaners used by touchless car washes are a contributor to the coating failures.

 

That woke me up, found this in the Owner's Manual (3rd gen, page 406):



Could be concern about abrasives? Or the solvents?

 

I think the abrasives, they are common in most waxes, but nothing I would use

 

Excellet, Fomoto. I did a variation of this by removing the old yellowed sealant with very fine sandpaper. In my case, I finished the job by protecting the cleaned headlights with a UV Resistant Clear Coat. Might be worth considering.

 

I'm with ya! Glass was best. Everything these days is "disposable". And they wonder why the landfills are full.

 

Hmm, never knew that. I’ve waxed them for years now with no I’ll effects and no headlight yellowing.