Have I found a magic bullet for restoring yellowing headlights?
There are two things which make an older car look really tatty in my opinion (outside of actual damage and bits hanging off). Dirty wheels and yellowed cloudy headlights. For the trusty (ish) old Renault runaround yellowy headlights are an issue. Not to mention counterproductive from a lighting the road perspective as the nights darken.
Whilst I had used a few methods, from jif to T-cut, to a cheapy amazon special headlight restoration kit, none had really cut the mustard, and required some elbow grease. I also tended to find the headlight unit would yellow again very quickly.
To do the job properly it seems sanding back the headlight with increasingly fine grades of wet and dry, then polishing and laquering are the long term solution. However, given I have many things to do and the cosmetics of the old runaround are low on my list, this was time for a better and newer solution.
If only there were a product which would remove the oxidation, polish and protect and be super quick to use! A magic bullet so to speak.
A quick rummage in the shed and enter stage left, 3m’s excellent Perfect It Gelcoat Cutting Compund and Wax. Surely worth a try, I have used this to remove oxidation and polish a few boats, excellent for that task, of course what it is designed for.
So breaking out a clean rag and the bottle I set to work. 5 minutes later, for both sides. tah dah.
You can be the judge but I was pretty happy with that. If I was going for showroom/ as new perfection I might want to spend more time on it but was pretty pleased.
Another fear with quick fixes is that they don’t last very long. So here we are three months later. Ok so there has been some degradation and slight return of cloudiness but for a 5 minute fix every three to six months, Renault’s perfect-it gets my big thumbs up for a great quick solution. I can spare 5 minutes a couple of times a year!
