How to Clean the Headlights
It was a hot weekend in July when we decided to clean the headlights on my 2008 Hyundai Sante Fe. Yep, she’s an oldie, and I love her. One of the best vehicles we have ever had and I hope to keep her for a few more years yet. Unfortunately the headlights have fogged over from years of sunlight and weather abuse.
We ordered the Cerakote Ceramic Headlight Restoration Kit from Amazon to give them a facelift. The box says you can have your “foggy, faded headlights to a like-new condition in under 30 minutes”. For us, the whole process took a few hours because we were working around weather and direct sunlight (the temp here was 25°C (31 with the humidity).
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What You Need
One of the things we like about this kit is no extra tools are required to complete the job. But you might need some painters tape to protect the edges where the paint job meets the light casing.
This handy kit includes: 8 oxidazation remover wipes, 1 surface prep pad, 4 surface prep discs, 2 ceramic clear coating wipes, 4 application gloves.
You will need access to water to clean the headlights between steps. We have an outdoor hose so that part was easy peasy.
The Steps Simplified
The process involves three steps:
- Step 1: Remove oxidization – with gloved hands you use the wipes in a circular pattern to deep clean them.
- Step 2: the headlights are lightly sanded with sanding discs.
- Step 3: with gloved hands the ceramic coating is applied in an overlapping pattern.
If you have 3.5 minutes, Cerakote has made a how-to video to give you a better idea of the process.
Cerakote Ceramic Headlight Restoration Kit is available from Amazon.ca for about $32 Canadian (about $16 US from Amazon.com).
With step one you really don’t notice any changes. It is just the preparation for the next step. As you can see, we were supervised by our trusty shepherd. The gloves are important for protecting the skin on your hands. Wear them!
In my opinion, the second step is the most important so you want to spend most of your time here, making sure you evenly sand the whole headlight. Depending on how weathered they are it might need more attention in some areas. You will see in the end results this is the step where we erred on the left side. At this point the headlight looks worse than when we started but the real magic happens in the next step.
In the final step you can see immediately how pretty they are going to be, yes wetness helps the appearance at this point but it really is miraculous to watch.
The Results
The vehicle is over fifteen years old so any cleaning is an improvement to what it was. I was not expecting “like new” results on such an old vehicle but I think it turned out pretty amazing.
And here they are the next day. This is where you can see we erred with the sanding. The left headlight casing still has some hazing over the inner section of the yellow light. Again, not a fault of the product but our execution. I am still happy with the results!
If you been hating the front view of your car, then this Cerakote Ceramic Headlight Restoration Kit will help you clean the headlights. It makes my car look years younger and now my friends can’t make fun of me because they look dirty.
