Am going to black out my headlights this weekend, but before doing that I need help.

My headlights are smoked from the outside by the previous owner. I would like to remove the paint before I open them up.
How do I go abt removing the paint?


Any help would be gretly appreciated.
Thanks

 

If it's sprayed on... good luck getting it off without ruining your lenses.

 

...have to agree with Spork on this one.

 

yeah, that's usually an unremovable thing...you may want to go to autozone and see what they have to say about removing dirt and tar from plastic...they may help...but it will probably ruin the shine to your lense...i would say go for it, but looks like the previous owner may have screwed you over on this one...

 

Thks tj. I stopped by a body shop yesterday n a guy there said he could make them look new again. He is only charging me 40 bucks so y not.

Hopefully will have a chance to drop my lenses off today n painting my housing at the same time.

 

sweet...good deal, man...put up some pics after, let me see how it turns out!

 

cant you just sand it down, and repolish it??

 

first off, nice avatar...second, it seems like if you sand down to the clear lense again and repolish it, you would have to do it repeatedly every now and again... am i wrong here?

 

You can wet sand them down till you get the paint off, then take a high speed buffer to them and buff them back to the clarity they were. They can easily be repaired.

 

Agreed- don't be afraid to take a very high-grit sand to the lens to clean it up. The headlights respond very well to buffing afterwards.

It will take a bit of elbow grease, though, to get all of the paint off of your lenses.

 

so ches and solo, nice of you to help, quick question... how often would you have to do that since what that would be doing when wet sanding (scratching the lense) and just putting something on top of it(polish)?

or since he's painting them that wouldn't matter?
we need to hear you're input on this, since you know...well no one else knows as much as you guys

 

hey dk, fyi, these guys like to mess up threads...

put those pics up when you get a chance...

good luck with the headlights

 

Actually Mr, TJGILROY likes to give bad info and cause issues in threads since he has been here. Do a post history on him.

But back on topic....

Use like 600 grit, and wetsand, till you get the paint off, then go back to 800 and 1000 and 1200. Once you are at 1200 and it's nice and smooth, get the buffer and compound and get to work. Polish them afterwards. It's just like restoring lights from the sun just a bit more work to get paint off. You will however need to keep them waxed as the coating that helps them from fading will be taken off when doing this.

Here is an example of me restoring a headlight.

 

hey OP...check this out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqZ53cJeJZI

i think this should work...

 

Thank you for your question.

Like Solo mentioned, they key is to start with a lower grit and progressively work towards your highest grits with a good soap and water in between.

The buffing is not simply to layer on a polish but to actively buff out imperfections left by the fine sandpaper. In essence, you are taking off a layer of the plastic (which is plenty thick) and leaving it spotless.

I suppose if you really wanted to, you could use a clear overlay to help protect the plastic, but those have caused stress fractures in the plastic from the headlight heating up during use and not being able to expand.

A restoration like this should only have to be done once or twice in a 5 year period, in my opinion (in normal driving conditions). A good headlight hand polishing using Meguiar's PlastX goes a long way toward keeping your headlights shiny in between your hardcore restorations. I personally use PlastX every other time I was the car but that may be overkill for most.

 

Thank you all. I finally dropped the lenses off at the body shop . The lenses will be done by tmmr n I'll be working on blacking out the bezels tonite.

Hopefully , will have the pic up by monday.

Also, am doing demon eyes mod.

Thanks again