Today I’m going to show you how you can keep your plastic headlights from yellowing and fading and cracking.
You may not know it, but modern cars, all the headlight assemblies are made out of plastic. They’re not made out of glass anymore.
The use of plastic instead of glass has a big drawback because plastic fades, cracks, while glass, it’s nice and hard. You can always clean it when it gets dirty. I have a 24 year old glass headlight and it still shines and looks great.
Plastic doesn’t last that long. The bulbs just fit inside easily and you can just pop them in and out when they burn out.
But when the plastic headlight gets cloudy and looks horrible, it costs a fortune to replace these things.
There’s kits out there that you can polish them and then put clear coat on them, that generally doesn’t last more than a year or so. The plastic is cheap to begin with so as you’re polishing it on you can only polish it so many times then the plastic will just crack and break
And then you have to buy the expensive assembly, but I found something that can coat your headlights so they don’t go bad in the first place.
It’s much better to prevent something than to keep having to fix it because it keeps fading and cracking.
Years ago I decided to try out this Meguair’s headlight coating to see if this stuff actually works. So I bought two headlight assemblies for this Matrix and then I would coat them one a year with this Meguiar’s coating.
And at the same time years ago, I got new headlight assemblies for my wife’s Lexus and I didn’t do anything to them.
I just left them alone with the original clear coat that the Chinese had spray coated because these are aftermarket assemblies, and check out the difference.
On the Lexus, you can see the clear coating is bubbling and peeling off.
The Chinese had sprayed on, they obviously didn’t do such a hot job putting that coating on. This was clear coat paint, in the factory they spray paint it with clear coat paint.
A lot of the guys say, that’s how we fix them. When they’re cloudy, we polish them up then spray them with clear coat paint.
But the clear coat paint almost always ends up cracking within a year and then it looks worse than it did in the first place, because clear coating paint it wasn’t made for that.
There are special plastic paints that can paint plastic bumpers, but they’re not clear like the headlamps that you can see through them, you want them crystal clear.
This stuff, the headlight coating is made for that,
Check out these Matrix headlights.
They have the Meguiar’s headlight coating sprayed on them once a year. they’re the same age as the other ones were that were clear coated, and these are still crystal clear.
That’s a big reason I tell people don’t use clear coat paint on your headlights, it just doesn’t last over time.
If your headlights are already fogged up, you can use the Meguiar’s PlastX and that’s a polish. You can polish all of the hazy and stuff off with this first. You put it on a clean microfiber towel and wipe it.
then you just get the headlight coating and spray it on
If you have a headlight that isn’t faded yet, you would just clean it with a little windex and let it dry and then spray this on to prevent it from getting yellow and faded in the first place.
You spray the stuff on, then you let it dry for 3 to 5 minutes and apply another coat, the second coat will completely seal it to keep the UV rays out and keep the plastic nice and pliable.
It won’t crack in the sun and fade, and really, cleaning your headlights once a year and then spraying Meguiar’s headlight coating on once a year is no big deal.
Like I said before, if it’s plastic, you can only polish it so many times and that’s it, then it’s just going to crack and break and you’ll have to buy another assembly.
Source: Scotty Kilmer
What others said about this on social media ?
Sponge Boob said living next door to this guy is probably interesting… out for your morning coffee and “oh lord there Scotty is screaming to himself again”
Paul Grimm said Even women have plastic headlights now
Carl Johnson said You want clear headlights? Buy a 94 Toyota Celica!
Larry Vang said I like how you mention “the Chinese” 😂🤣 damn Chinese products
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