Rev up your engines!
today I'm going to show you how you can keep your plastic headlights from yellowing and
fading and cracking, now you may not know it, but modern cars,
all the headlight assemblies are made out of plastic,
they're not made out of glass anymore now the use of plastic instead of glass has
a big drawback plastic fades, cracks, while glass,
it's nice and hard, you can always clean it when it gets dirty but really,
this is a 24 year old glass headlight and it still shines and looks great, plastic doesn't
last that long, now the modern headlight assemblies hey,
they've got one better idea, the bulbs just fit inside and you can just pop them in and
out when they burn out, but when the assembly gets cloudy and looks
horrible because it's plastic, it costs a fortune to replace these things,
and yes there's kits out there that you can polish them and then put clear coat on them,
that generally doesn't last more than a year or so and maybe not even that,
and the plastic is cheap to begin with so as you're polishing it on you can only polish
it so many times then the plastic will just crack and break and then you have to buy the
expensive assembly, but I found something that can coat your headlights
so they don't go bad in the first place, it's much better to prevent something than
to keep having to fix it because it keeps fading and cracking,
and realize although my videos may be rather short,
sometimes they take a while to make, like this one too years,
because years ago I decided to try out this Meguair's headlight coating to see if this
stuff actually works, so I bought two headlight assemblies for this
Matrix and then I would coat them one a year with this Meguiar's coating,
and at the same time years ago, I got new headlight assemblies for my wife's Lexus and
I didn't do anything to them, I just left them alone with the original clear coat that
the Chinese had spray coated because these are aftermarket assemblies,
and check out the difference, here's the Lexus, you can see the clear coating is bubbling
and peeling off, the Chinese had sprayed on, they obviously didn't do such a hot job putting
that coating on, now this was clear coat paint, in the factory
they spray paint it with clear coat paint, and a lot of the guys say, oh that's how we
fix them, when they're cloudy we polish them up then spray them with clear coat paint,
but the clear coat paint almost always ends up cracking within a year and then it looks
worse than it did in the first place, because clear coating paint it wasn't made
for that, now there are special plastic paints that
can paint plastic bumpers and stuff, but they're not clear like the headlamps that
you can see through them, you want them crystal clear,
now this stuff, the headlight coating is made for that,
check out these Matrix headlights, they have the Meguiar's headlight coating sprayed on
them once a year, they're the same age as the other ones were
that were clear coated, and these are still crystal clear,
that's a big reason I tell people don't use clear coat paint on your headlights, it just
doesn't last over time, now if your headlights are already fogged
up, you can use the Meguiar's PlastX and that's a polish, you can polish all of the hazy and
stuff off with this first, you just put it on a clean microfiber towel
and wipe it, then you just get the headlight coating and
spray it on, if you have a headlight that isn't faded yet,
you would just clean it with a little windex and let it dry and then spray this on to prevent
it from getting yellow and faded in the first place,
you just spray the stuff on, then you let it dry for 3 to 5 minutes and
apply another coat, the second coat will completely seal it to
keep the UV rays out and keep the plastic nice and pliable so it won't crack in the
sun and fade, and really, cleaning your headlights once
a year and then spraying Meguiar's headlight coating on once a year is no big deal,
it will keep the plastic from fading and it looks great and you don't have to worry about
polishing it and repainting it with actual clear coat paint,
and realize like I said before, if it's plastic, you can only polish it so many times and that's
it, then it's just going to crack and break and you'll have to buy another assembly,
and yes I miss the old days when headlights were made out of glass and you didn't have
to worry about any of this plastic nonsense, but let's face it, plastic is here to stay,
it's cheaper to make, they can make it any shape they want so it goes with the style
of the car, plastic is here to stay so learn how to deal with it and you'll be happy,
because really, look at the old crapper that I took out of my garbage bin when I replaced
it for a customer, it looks pretty good now,
but truth be told, you can't use this one over, the reason I replaced it was because
it's got a crack in the plastic and it filled up with water when it rained,
so that's why you want to prevent it in the first place by putting the coating on so plastic
doesn't crack, so if you never want to miss another one of
my new car repair videos, remember to ring that bell!