I have an 07 350z that the previous owner smoked the headlights on. I'm having trouble figuring out what they did to get these headlights. I have tried cleaning with brake cleaner the way I've seen to get VHT nightshade off and didn't have any success with that. I also tried with a heat gun to see if it was tint that would peel off, but I don't see any seams around the edge and the heat had no effect on it.

Also, the housing holes do not line up with any of the mounting holes, except for one hole in front which is the only bolt holding them on.

Due to the darkened lens and the impromper mounting, these end up producing almost no usable light at night. The car had some front end damage before, so I thought they might have been replaced with some cheap replicas or something that just have dark lenses, but when I turn the light on I can see the inside of the housing and it all looks like normal 06+ OEM.

Here is an imgur album showing them with the light on and off.

Headlight Imgur Gallery

Any thoughts?

 

Cured paint shouldn't come off with brake cleaner.

If it was me I'd take an orbital and wet sand with 800-1000 grit to remove the spray tint.(hose on low and electric sander...I haven't broken one yet) Move up to 1500 (sungold on amazon makes them this high)

Then buff with an orbital pad (I use carpro denim pad) with meguiars ultimate compound (one's I've purchased that were 2-3x the cost of meguairs don't perform as good)

Then you need to use a UV sealer, but I never have gone that far, so maybe someone else can recommend something?

 

For anybody wondering, the answer appears to have been that it was both. I took them off to replace them with DEPOs and it turns out that one was already a DEPO and it was painted and the other was something that was not DEPO and didn't have any paint running down it so I believe it may have been tinted. I don't know how to tell if that one is OEM or not. May be some other aftermarket piece with a dark lens. I'm probably still going to wet sand them later and see what I come up with.

 

This thread might be worth a read:

https://my350z.com/forum/body-interi...v-coating.html