Backup camera - Any way to restore?

Yes the last time I bought one of these things and all that I I took some of that stuff you use on headlight lenses and all of that plastic restore I think it was McGuire's and a white bottle and I put some of that on a rag and rubbed it over the lens I don't know for about 5 minutes made a huge difference The next time I had the stuff out I had my little buffing wheel on my electric motor like a Dremel and I buffed it and it seemed to do very well. And then there are some models that have better cameras than others I'm not sure if this is a year thing or how this works but I've noticed that if I get the MFD and/or the camera off of fairly loaded generation to like one that has the GPS and all of that upper level trim the backup camera seems to be better definition or something I don't care what it is but it looks better so I've done that a couple of times taking the camera off of a loaded vehicle and put it on my '07 or '09 or even my '05 which weren't base cars but they weren't the full ride and then in another car I changed the MFD to the one that's well above a base and even had better video from my rear camera which was from the factory on the upper level MFD so I'm not sure what's going on there I don't think there's anything wrong with any of the components but maybe something got changed in the middle of the generation 2 model or maybe not and then you can add aftermarket cameras I think if you pay attention that'll even display on our MFD Just realized that our MFDs are not that high of a resolution so getting a super high resolution cameras not going to really help you on the factory MFD if you replace the stereo with one of those clarion's or whatever You can get a backup camera the 1080p practically.

 

you can polish it- more or less the same materials and technique as one would use for headlamp restoration.

 

I tried polishing my Gen 3 backup camera lens because it became foggy after 11 years, but it didn't work. I gave up and tried to replace it.

To escape the $600+ cost of a genuine replacement, I tried 3 different third party cameras from Amazon and elsewhere. None of them worked, despite 3 different experts working on it.
Sure glad I sold that car. The new owner didn't seem to have a problem with it.

 

Wash it thoroughly with some Dawn (or equivalent) and water, with at most gentle pressure, before trying to buff it. All the grit that might be on it has to come off first or any attempt to clean the lens that involves a lot of rubbing motion (by hand or machine) will scratch it badly.