{"id":139,"date":"2009-08-13T17:42:30","date_gmt":"2009-08-13T22:42:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chrismeyer.org\/wordpress\/?p=139"},"modified":"2009-08-13T17:42:30","modified_gmt":"2009-08-13T22:42:30","slug":"10-minute-headlight-repair-remove-headlight-haze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chrismeyer.org\/wordpress\/?p=139","title":{"rendered":"10 Minute Headlight Repair &#8211; Remove Headlight Haze"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After watching the headlights on the 1997 Ford Taurus grow progressively more and more hazy until night driving was impacted we finally decided to invest in the $10 headlight restoration \/ polish kit which supposedly would restore the headlights to their original haze free condition.  I&#8217;m certainly a skeptic with these products, as more often than not they&#8217;re just a scam. . .<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_141\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/chrismeyer.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/DSC07515.JPG\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-141\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-141\" title=\"Ford Taurus Hazy Headlight before Repair\" src=\"http:\/\/chrismeyer.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/DSC07515-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"Ford Taurus Hazy Headlight before Repair\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/chrismeyer.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/DSC07515-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/chrismeyer.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/DSC07515.JPG 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-141\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ford Taurus Hazy Headlight before Repair<\/p><\/div>\n<p>So I got out my drill, cracked open the headlight restoration kit and . . .  READ THE DIRECTIONS!  The kit basically included 1 arbor to mount whichever pad you were using on it, 2 ~360 grit foam backed sanding discs, and a single foam pad for use with the polishing compound.  I of course, having read the directions, figured we were suffering from a severe case of hazing, so I opted for first using plenty of water and the sanding discs to start things off.  The second I touched the sanding disc to the headlight I realized my mistake and now deep scratches which would now require extra buffing time.\u00a0 After about 3 seconds of buffing and continuously moving you can almost immediately see results:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_142\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/chrismeyer.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/DSC07518.JPG\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-142\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-142\" title=\"Ford Taurus Headlight after Repair\" src=\"http:\/\/chrismeyer.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/DSC07518-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"Ford Taurus Headlight after Repair\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/chrismeyer.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/DSC07518-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/chrismeyer.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/DSC07518.JPG 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-142\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ford Taurus Headlight after Repair<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Recommendations on Repairing your Own Headlights:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Carefully clean your headlights before beginning, otherwise you&#8217;ll grind the dead bugs into your headlights and have more of a mess to repair!<\/li>\n<li>Use the foam pad and polishing compound liberally, keep moving so you don&#8217;t burn (overheat) the headlights in spots<\/li>\n<li>You don&#8217;t need to be running the drill full throttle, it takes very little pressure and very little speed, take it easy<\/li>\n<li>Finally, have water handy and occasionally rinse the whole light off to observe any progress and remove anything that&#8217;s on the surface so you don&#8217;t grind it into the headlight<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Finally,\u00a0 if you&#8217;re a DIYer, you can likely perform the same repair with toothpaste and a foam pad glued to a drill\/dremel\/buffer arbor.\u00a0 Better yet you can likely buy some polycarbonate polish for cheap from a plastics store (industrial) near your home.\u00a0 ALWAYS make sure you test your solution on a small unimportant corner of the light to see what&#8217;s going to happen before going right to the center of your lense cover and potentially hazing a bad spot in the middle, and ultimately what&#8217;s $10 to know you&#8217;re doing it right?<\/p>\n<p>You can purchase the kit I used from your local <a href=\"http:\/\/www.harborfreight.com\">Harbor Freight store<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.harborfreight.com\/cpi\/ctaf\/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=65938\">click this link<\/a> and when you&#8217;re done <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hfreviews.com\">review your Harbor Freight purchases here!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After watching the headlights on the 1997 Ford Taurus grow progressively more and more hazy until night driving was impacted we finally decided to invest in the $10 headlight restoration \/ polish kit which supposedly would restore the headlights to their original haze free condition. I&#8217;m certainly a skeptic with these products, as more often [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[50,49,48],"class_list":["post-139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-headlight-buffing","tag-headlight-haze","tag-polycarbonate-polish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chrismeyer.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chrismeyer.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chrismeyer.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chrismeyer.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chrismeyer.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=139"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/chrismeyer.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":143,"href":"https:\/\/chrismeyer.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions\/143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chrismeyer.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chrismeyer.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chrismeyer.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}