Queue → job type
Headlight restoration
The factory UV hard coat has failed, not the plastic. It comes off completely and a new UV clear goes on — which is why it takes an hour and not fifteen minutes.
What has actually failed
Headlight lenses are polycarbonate, which is tough and clear and, left to itself, degrades in ultraviolet light within a couple of years. So from the factory every lens carries a hard UV coating on the outside. That coating is what fails — it goes chalky, crazes, and turns the whole lens yellow and cloudy. The plastic underneath is usually still clear and still fine.
This matters because it tells you what the job has to be. Polishing a failed coating just polishes the failure. It looks superb the day it is done, and in Florida it is chalky again inside a season, because there is now nothing at all standing between ultraviolet and the polycarbonate. A great many “headlight restorations” sold in this state are exactly that, and the customer's conclusion is that restoration does not last, when what did not last was a polish sold as one.
How it is done properly
The old coating comes off completely. Wet sanding, starting coarse enough to actually cut through the degraded layer — usually around 800 — then stepping up through the grits, 1000, 1500, 2000, 3000, each pass removing the scratches from the last, with the lens kept wet throughout and the paint around it masked. Then a polish to bring the plastic back to optical clarity.
And then the part the job actually depends on: a fresh UV clear laid over the top. That is the new sacrificial coating, and it is why the whole thing takes about an hour a pair instead of fifteen minutes. Without it, everything before it was a countdown.
What we cannot fix
Haze on the inside of the lens, or moisture sitting in the bottom of the housing, is not a surface problem. The housing seal has failed, and the only real repairs are resealing the unit — which means removing it, and on many cars removing half a bumper cover to get at it — or replacing it. Sanding the outside of a lens that is fogged on the inside achieves nothing at all, and we will tell you that rather than take an hour's money for a lens that looks the same afterwards.
Cracked lenses are a replacement. So is a lens where the reflector behind it has gone dull or blistered, which happens with age and heat and is quite common on cars past a certain vintage: the plastic ends up spotless, the light output is still poor, and no amount of work on the outside changes that.
Aftermarket ideas we decline
Tinting or smoking a headlight lens reduces light output, and on a public road that is not a styling choice we are prepared to make on somebody's behalf. Retrofitting a different bulb technology into a housing that was not designed for it produces glare that blinds oncoming drivers even when it looks brighter from the driver's seat. Neither is work this van does.
The haze is on the inside of the lens
That is a failed housing seal, not a surface problem, and nothing done to the outside changes it. It needs the unit resealed or replaced, and we will not charge an hour to make no visible difference.
The lens is cracked
A crack lets water and dirt in and it spreads. Sanding and coating over it hides it for a while and solves nothing. Replacement.
The reflector behind the lens has gone dull
Perfectly clear plastic in front of a blistered reflector still gives poor light. If that is what we can see in the photographs we will tell you the restoration is not worth your money.
Tinting, smoking, or a bulb retrofit
Both reduce or scatter light on a public road, and the glare version blinds oncoming drivers while looking brighter from the driver's seat. Not work this van does.
The frame above is built at the size and shape the real picture will be, and its caption names the photograph that belongs in it. A real site carries the company's own — their vans, their techs, their panels. None have been generated for this demonstration. There is no before-and-after frame here and there is not going to be one: in this trade that pair is the result, so an invented one would be a fabricated repair rather than a placeholder.
Text photographs to (656) 236-2374 and you will have an answer the same day — a written price, or a reason it is not ours. Or use the request form. What to photograph, and why →