I had a request on the review that I posted three months ago asking how things look now that time has past.

I think it overall things still look good. I don’t think they have degraded much (if any) since I polished it back then.

Things look as they did before. The biggest difference between the two is that the restored one (driver’s side) doesn’t seem to have the anti-reflection properties of the factory one. This is the same as after I first did it. I’m guessing that’s the layer that got all messed up in the first place that I polished off.

All in all I’m still happy and would recommend this kit with no reservations!

Check the gallery below for more picture.

(Remember: Driver’s side is repaired, passenger-side is original factory)

Ok, we finally have a true and unmitigated winner! The 3M Headlight Restoration Kit is the real deal!

Unlike the previous kits I tried it this one fully resurfaces the headlight. Like the Meguiar’s it mounts to a drill, but it’s different in that you have different things you apply to the pad.

After the 500-grit sanding

It starts off with a very agressive 500-grit sanding pad. When you’re finished with it I looked at the headlight with a “oh geez, now I killed it” look. It was the first of the kits that was able to power through the tough sections of the headlight lens and get to a fully uniform surface. Even this had a bit of trouble it was so tough. Thankfully the instructions have a picture of what it should look like afterward and mine matched more-or-less exactly.

From there it progresses through 800-grit sanding, a foam wet-polishing pad and finally a rubbing compound. At each stage it starts to look more and more like a clear headlight. At the end I can honestly say it looked nearly new!

Of all of the kits this was also the easiest to do from a work perspective. It requires a bit more attention to detail, but as long as you can read directions you should be good to go.

I should’ve went with this kit first. I picked it up for only $15 at Amazon. Too bad I didn’t find it sooner. (In my defense, I didn’t see this locally, only online)

Ok, so here’s the before anything:

Before the 3M kit:

After the 3M Kit:

I think I could have skipped all the other steps I’ve tried and went directly to the end state in one step. I don’t know if I’ve even seen a product who’s performance really was quite as jaw-dropping as this was.

I highly recommend this if you have a headlight that needs some TLC.

This topic is back for round two. The first installment was trying out the Rain-X version of the same concept. That didn’t work as well as I had hoped it would. But — and there’s always a but — I had some choices when I was picking up that failed experiment.

This time I headed back to the store and picked up Meguiar’s Headlight Restoration Kit since I was still annoyed at how things looked. In fact I think things looked a bit worse in the intervening month. More oxidation I’m guessing.

Before (after the other attempt a month ago) it looked like this:

After around 20 minutes of hitting it with the included buffing pad attached to my drill things really started to look a lot better. It’s still work, but a lot less tiresome than before!

After around 20 minutes (and a little bit of hand work with a towel for a bit of detail work):

I still worked up a bit of a sweat and blew threw two batteries, but I can say with confidence that this stuff really works! If you’re going to try it out make sure you have some charged battery packs (or have a corded drill you can plug into the mains outlet)

The only real downside I can think of is the pad is too small to work on some of the more intricate parts of my headlight. Realistically though I think a pad that’s smaller would be more annoying for the most part since I was mostly working with the main part of the headlight. I’ll probably pick up something I can put on my Dremel and take care of some of the details.

Final thought: I would definitely recommend this to someone looking to make a headlight look better!

Headlight before

A few weeks ago I started to notice that the left headlight on my 2002 Audi A6 was getting kind of messed up. By that I mean it was getting yellow and not nearly as jewel-like as the right one.

They’re of different vintages which is why I’m not surprised that it’s affecting one but not the other. The right one was replaced in 2004 or 2005 after I was in an accident caused by an uninsured driver (that was quite the headache!)

At first glance it looked and felt like it was inside the headlight, but as I started looking at it closer it seemed that the plastic itself was getting pitted on the outside. I decided to go to an auto parts store to see if I could get something to fix it. I came home with Rain-X’s kit.

The kit consists of three different sanding pads of increasing fine grit, sanding lubricant, sealant and the big bottle of headlight restorer. The headlight restorer seems like some variety of very fine cut rubbing compound — it has little white flecks of grit in it.

I followed the instructions and after a lot of elbow grease (using the #1 pad for around 15 minutes) the yellow was gone, but the pitting remained.

What I noticed is that the headlight itself seems to have two distinct layers of plastic, an outer harder plastic and an inner slightly softer plastic. It seemed that the abrasives in the kit weren’t up to the task of getting through the harder plastic. The problem is that while each layer seems clear, the area where the top layer was partially worn through looks like crap.

The kit might work for some folks, but the end result is only a bit better than the start. No yellowing, but still not what I would call awesome. I might give Meguiar’s kit a try to see if it works any better.

The end result

Update: Check out the 3M Headlight Restoration Kit for the winner product!