Turtle Wax Headlight Restoration Kit

[Prince Valiant]

Okay, MY turn at headlight restore...much like Ben and Coop, both my Insight and my Grand Cherokee (well, NOW I have a grand cherokee since the parents are simplifying), both were in desperate need of headlight restoration.

SO, for the insight, used this turtle wax kit, with terrific success...very happy with the outcome. Not a bad investment at only 8 bucks :thumbsup

So, visiting my parents in TX, and knowing that the California, Florida, and Texas sun has always been exceptionally hard on the headlight lenses, I figured I'd do the same while down there. Well, no one seemed to have turtle wax's headlight lens restore, so I used another kit, from meguires. Any luck? NONE. There was a mild improvement, but otherwise, it was a big disappointment...as a matter of fact, the "Before" pictures you'll see are the "AFTER" pics for the meguires kit I used before...even though the product seemed mostly the same, just a slight difference in when you sand, and when you polish.

So fast forward to tonight, decided to tackle the job again and use my machine buffer to help provide some elbow grease...AND use what I felt was the superior product in the turtle wax.

So how did it fare?

BEFORE:

Driver side
http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/ad349/sweetroscoe/resotre/Picture013.jpg

Passenger side (yuck!)
http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/ad349/sweetroscoe/resotre/Picture014.jpg

The product:

TURTLE WAX 5JKN9 Headlight Lens Restoration Kit

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/ad349/sweetroscoe/resotre/Picture015.jpg

AFTER:

Driver side
http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/ad349/sweetroscoe/resotre/Picture016.jpg

Passenger side
http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/ad349/sweetroscoe/resotre/Picture017.jpg



As you can see, dramatic improvement :wow

As you'll notice, the passenger side is still far from perfect...but still MUCH better. The problem was that the while doing the driver side first, I wore through the pads enough that not enough effective sanding could be done the on the second passenger light...even though I used less than half the pad on the first driver side, that's how much was needed on the passenger side :durr

This kit was very cost effective...definitely helped using a high speed orbital buffer for the job, but even that couldn't get the blotches you see in the before pics. But the sanding system work out great...as stated, just wished the pads were bigger given the size of the imperfections I had to work with on both the insight and the jeep. The sealant at the end really set-off the headlight lens.

Highly recommended :thumbsup

[T-Bag]

You know what's funny? I just did the same thing on my jeep, which happens to be a WJ with the exact same headlights, exact same color and a gouge in the front fascia on the driver's side :rolf . I've seen so many of these headlights all fogged up

I used the 3m 3 step which worked damn well on my passenger side but I had a hard time getting that "scum" looking stuff off...looked like its actually on the inside of the headlight. The 3m uses 3 sandpaper stages and a buffing compound.

[Prince Valiant]

After the first product I tried failed, I was also convinced the scum looking stuff was on the inside of the lens as well...

But looking closer, you could feel the ridge/roughness of the stuff on the outside of the lens. I'm convinced that the that the only reason I could not get the passenger side looking as good as the DS is because there was so much of that gunk, that I wore through both sides of the first two sanding pads just to end up where I did(this one has 4 pads...1 and 2 get their own pad, use 1 side per headlight. 3 and 4 share a singular pad).

I might at some point in the near future tackle this again, starting with the passenger side first for sanding, and just use the rubbing compound on the driver side since pretty much all the gunk on that side is gone.

The meguires I used before had the same basic set-up as well...three sanding pads, rubbing compound, sealing compound...but it started you with the sanding first, instead of second like the turtle wax. The sealing compound didn't seem to do as good a job either.

[CPonyGo]

I used 4 stages of wet sand paper lots of water and then followed it up with a polishing compound on my Nissan altima and then my kids car...absolutely perfect....looks new...yeah its a little elbow grease involved but the result is levels above head light restorer alone..and I tried the headlight restorer by itself...oh the polishing at the end was done with a Mothers ball..lol..turned out sweet

[T-Bag]

After the first product I tried failed, I was also convinced the scum looking stuff was on the inside of the lens as well...

But looking closer, you could feel the ridge/roughness of the stuff on the outside of the lens. I'm convinced that the that the only reason I could not get the passenger side looking as good as the DS is because there was so much of that gunk, that I wore through both sides of the first two sanding pads just to end up where I did(this one has 4 pads...1 and 2 get their own pad, use 1 side per headlight. 3 and 4 share a singular pad).

I might at some point in the near future tackle this again, starting with the passenger side first for sanding, and just use the rubbing compound on the driver side since pretty much all the gunk on that side is gone.

The meguires I used before had the same basic set-up as well...three sanding pads, rubbing compound, sealing compound...but it started you with the sanding first, instead of second like the turtle wax. The sealing compound didn't seem to do as good a job either.

Give the 3m kit a shot. It gives you 3 stages of sanding (1 wetsanding) as well as a buffing pad with buffing compound, everything just attaches to a drill. I guess next time I could try sanding the crap out of that stuff, as I didn't spend a whole lot of time on it.