My headlights stink. So I bought a cleaning kit for about $10. Then they stunk, but a little less for awhile. Then they stunk the same again. I was watching Trucks! and they showed how to clean your headlights virtually free: Sand your headlights with some wet/dry sandpaper. They used 1500 but I had 600 lying around so I used that. Scrub for 5 minutes. Next, go into your bathroom and borrow the tube of toothpaste. Squirt some on your headlights and polish it with a buffing pad hooked onto your drill. I had an old polishing pad hanging around so I used that. Polish until the paste gets sort of dry and then a little more. Wipe off and clean with glass cleaner. Now my headlights look almost new. Aquafreshtastic!

 

i tried one of those headlight cleaning kits that had the sandpaper & sealer with it. Is this the kind of kit you are talking about that you used.

Does the method using the sandpaper & toothpaste work much better?

 

whatever you use it helps if you use a good paste wax on them afterwards

 

An added benefit is it prevents lens cavities too!

 

Remember to not use the remaining headlight cleaning kit for toothpaste!

I heard it doesn't work the other way around!

 

In my opinion, the toothpaste works 100% better and the headlight lens now looks almost new. My drill was running out of juice so I didn't even get to polish it as much as I wanted. I'll never waste my money on a headlight cleaning kit again. Minty fresh, too....

 

That's hilarious! And something I'm going to try this week. I've used a headlight restore kit a couple of times, makes 'em look better, but I'll give the ol' arm n hammer toothpaste a shot. Why not?

 

Nice find. Sounds like a project to try on my fog lights. The headlights are in good shape since I did the Sport conversion a while back, but the fogs look pretty beat down.

 

You don't need no stupid kits. Just get some good rubbing compound and if you have a buffer you can make them shine like new

 

bingo- all you're doing is polishing, or sanding if bad, the surface of the lens to remove the oxidized plastic. Simichrome polish was the first stuff widely recommended for that before the "kits" started flooding the market.

The sealer kits are a last chance- once you apply the sealer stuff you can;t usually repolish the lens if it goes yellow again later.

 

I tried it today and it worked great. One of the lens was pretty bad and it cleaned it right up. Thanks for the post.

 

Mine have excessive tartar build up any recomendations?

 

I clean my headlights every month or so with just plain toothpaste. It does fine, it's cheap and they smell kissy sweet afterward.