What's the solution? Well, you could shovel out potentially hundreds of dollars for new covers, or you could restore the ones you have now for just one easy payment of less than $20!
No, I'm not Billy Mayes and this isn't an infomercial, but I did try a product intended to "restore" headlight covers. My girlfriend's car had the problem described above, and new covers were quoted at a ridiculous amount. Driving at night, especially outside of the city, was strenuous to say the least. The headlights were pretty dim.
Anyway, her dad, I think it was, got her this restoration stuff. It's basically a few pieces of increasingly finer sandpaper and some polishing solution. I was a little doubtful that it would work. Heck, it looked like I might as well take my power sander to the covers if this stuff was supposed to do the trick. But hey, it was either try this or she would have to find another solution, so we gave it a try.
Here we are starting with a rough grit sandpaper. The instructions say to keep it wet and give it a good 5 min per grit, and there are four grits! I wasn't too stoked about waxing on, waxing off for 20 min per headlight. But we stuck with it and went through the motions. I gave this product the benefit of the doubt and tried to follow the instructions and best as I could (stand).
Fifteen minutes later and still at it. The only thing that kept me going at this point is that it actually was starting to look more clear. I pressed on...
Hey, that really does look better! Here I am applying the polishing solution. Call me crazy, but I think this just might work...
Check out the before and after pictures. I'd sure say that worked. The headlight visibility at night definitely improved. This sure beat the heck out of buying new covers. The restoration kit was under $20 and I'm sure you can find them at auto parts stores. If you have foggy headlight covers, you might consider giving this a shot.
