Dougal Campbell's geek ramblings

For a while now, the passenger-side headlight on our van has been covered with a hazy film. We had tried scrubbing it with various cleaners we had around the house, but could never get it to clear up. Susan picked up a cleaning kit, and last weekend I finally had a chance to give it a try.

This is what our headlight looked like before I started:

The kit is the 3M Lens Renewal System. Our kit came with masking tape (to protect the areas around the headlight), a disk attachment, two different grits of sandpaper, a gray buffing disk, an orange buffing sponge, and lens polish compound.

After masking off the painted areas around the headlight, I used the 500 grit sanding disks to sand the surface of the headlight lens. At this point, the lens has a uniformly white surface, and any major scratches should be buffed out:

Next, I used the 800 grit sanding disks to refine the surface, and remove finer scratches:

Then I used the gray P3000 buffing disk and water to do a wet buff. At this point, the lens is starting to look clear again, but is still a tiny bit opaque:

Finally, I used the orange buffing sponge with a little of the lens polishing compound to finish things off. The final result looks pretty good!

I only head to clean up one of our headlights, but the kit came with enough supplies to work on (at a guess) four lights, if needed.