3M Headlight Restoration Kit: STAY AWAY

[KRB_Borden]

Purchased a 3M Headlight Restoration Kit for my Adrenalin the other day, read a ton of awesome reviews on the net so I decided to give it a try, I live in Ontario, Canada which is a pretty sandy province and just wanted to eliminate my surface scratches from sand damage.

So I started out using the kit reading the first step: Sand using 500 grit sandpaper on a 1200 RPM drill to remove the UV coating on the headlights. OK, sounds simple enough, one HOUR later my headlight not only looked like absolute SH$%, but I noticed that the UV coating in Sport Trac headlights is extremely thick, and when your sanding wheel clogs with every touch of the drill, if you have a month off work and need something extremely tedious to do, by all means this is the product for you! (Oh, and the kit comes with 6 500-grit sanding wheels, I burned through 3 of them in 30 minutes and got nowhere)

There's not much more to tell, I went to Canadian tire and bought 400 grit sandpaper disks hoping it would get the job done quicker, but the thickness of the UV coating being sanded off just clogs up your disk once every 5 seconds, literally. After 2 hours I called it quits as I was ready to put a bat through my headlight.

So once again, STAY AWAY from this product if you have never restored your headlights before, that UV coating on the headlights does not screw around. My advice is take it to a professional, even if it ends up costing you the price of 5 or 6 kits, I have an appointment booked for next week, maybe I'll drive the girlfriends car for a few days considering my Adrenalin is now the biggest embarrassment on 4 wheels!

And if you found this product worked great for you I salute you , but from my personal experience, don't even think about it!

 

[schiavonske1013]

Well when I used it I remember reading in the instructions not to use the kit on any lenses that were not very yellow or really cloudy, so maybe your UV layer just was not worn in enough, I have read about this happening before on newer headlights that weren't damaged enough.

 

[corkey]

throw that kit in the trash, get some 2000 wet paper, make a mixture of dishsoap and water and polish them up,, once the surface is nice and smooth,, than wax them up and call it good,, i did that to mine, it ended up looking like new,,

 

[KRB_Borden]

My headlights were extremely sand damaged, at night when my lights were on I couldn't even see the bulb, it was just a foggy layer, I noticed behind the UV layer it removed all the sand damage, but maaaan it would take me a full week just to sand 2 headlights, not to mention the clogging of the disks, that got incredibly annoying

 

[corkey]

i did mine by hand in about 45 minutes,,

 

[JohnnyO]

Try these if you have to run on a lot of gravel, etc.

http://www.autoanything.com/lights/60A1218A0A0.aspx

I hit the lights on all our cars with Meguier's Plast-X once in a while and they stay shiny.