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My car is a 2013 and the headlights are gradually becoming foggier looking. I’m not sure if I should spend 30 bucks on a headlight restoration kit from discount auto or just buy new headlights all together and replace what’s on the car. IF I were to restore them, how long would the headlights stay clear until they get foggy again? Do the kits even work well at all? I’m thinking it might be better to buy new headlights even though it’ll cost more.
It depends on how bad things are. Sometimes you can baby the headlight back to good for a while. It is an ongoing process. I would not pay $30 for a kit. Toothpaste, Plastic X ($5 at Walmart) and even fine sanding paper or rubbing compound works.
As for the future, I have had good luck waxing the headlights when the car is new and they stayed fine for the most part of the car's life.
I can honestly say that here in the desert it was less hassle replacing ( almost )
then trying to restore the old ones
If you do the E-Bay route, confirm year, make & model and the return
policy. I had an issue with a company who sent a set for a '04 Sebring
sedan and I needed ones for a Convertible. Even after sending pictures
of both of them side by side they wanted me to pay return shipping before
they would send the correct ones out
After lighting them up on their feedback and contact from my card company
they finally did the right thing
The next time I need to replace a set ( '11 Crown Vic ) used another company
without surprises.
Depends on the vehicle. Some vehicles allow easy DIY headlight assembly replacement. Some don’t even require tools. However some make it extremely difficult to replace headlight assemblies. My wife’s previous car required removing the entire front molded bumper and part of the front wheel well. There were so many fasteners and clips that I didn’t want to take the risk of doing it myself. She took it to a friend who owns a body shop. Some of the clips broke and some of the screws got lost and he had all the replacement parts on hand when putting it back together and aligning the bumper.
Replacing means you’ll have years without the issue returning. Depending on the product and your workmanship those OTC products can last a few months or year before having to be touched up again. Though they get the assembly looking clear, they’re not always truly clear. After dark turn on the headlights and you may see hairline cracks and scratches not visible or n normal daylight. These reduce the light projection. If caught early enough you can prevent it from getting this bad. If it’s progressed to this point then just replace them.
Wished they would go back to glass. Plastic gets faded out after about 6 years. The lights are like new on my 2013 C6 Vette, but i am sure it spent most of the time in a garage before i bought it.
I bought new headlight assays for my Tahoe. I payed like 80.00 for the pair from Amazon. I saw them even cheaper on E-Bay.
I have a 2015 Subaru Forester Touring that has HID headlights. A pair of headlight assemblies at AutoZone is about $1300. I can only imagine how much they'd cost at the Subaru dealer. I wouldn't want to buy cheap knockoffs on eBay. They most likely wouldn't work properly.
I'll have to do the restoration route if I do anything (the lights still light the road up fine; they just don't look good).
I was thinking of trying very mild polishing compound using my Porter Cable random orbital polisher (used for buffing and polishing the car paint).
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