in today's video we're going to try and answer the grand old question
is it really possible to restore car headlights using nothing but toothpaste
so what's it all about how does it even happen in the first place first of all these lights
are plastic and plastic is porous and when they first come out of a showroom you will
find they've got a little protective coating but that protective coating over time gets gradually
broken down by the sun's uv rays hence the fogging so what we're gonna do today we're gonna tackle
it with a bit of toothpaste and we're going to see if you really can restore these headlights
i'm making this video today because i had so many people ask if it really works
so i thought what the heck i'll get out my camera and crack open some toothpaste
after showing off my incredible masking tape skills i was ready to start this ridiculous test
when starting off make sure you have clean headlights and i'm using a lightly
dampened cloth with toothpaste and i'm just rubbing it into the lights but i am using
quite a bit of force to break down some of the old dead uv coating and the thing with toothpaste is
yes it does have abrasives but no they're not the right kind of abrasives that are needed to break
it down thoroughly i will make a proper in-depth video about restoring car headlights using the wet
sanding method and i'll also look at a few other products but my main focus for today's video was
just to see if this was possible or if it was just a myth so with the first section i applied just
toothpaste and when you compare it to the other section i haven't done it actually looks pretty
good to be fair but it's not perfect but i want to try and push things just a little bit further and
that's why i'm going to be using alien magic opti now this is a headlamp restorer dedicated for this
sort of thing and what i'm going to do is apply it by machine just to see if i can get them to look
near enough perfect as you can see here i'm using a rotary machine polisher as i wanted to get this
done as quickly as possible and the one i'm using for the job right here costs less than 50 pounds
and this one's made by silverline and i'll put a link in the description below if you want to
grab yourself a bargain and i'm not going to say it's the best one in the world by any means
but for less than 50 pounds you can't go wrong opti did a great job of breaking it down and
for me although toothpaste seems like a cheap and easy way to restore them which it was to a certain
extent i just felt it needed a little bit more bite so i was glad i used opti to finish it off
and if you're going to have a go yourself make sure that you protect the headlights afterwards
because what's going to happen is it's now completely unprotected the uv rays are just going
to fog up the lights twice as fast so make sure you get yourself a very good sealant to go on top
so the biggest question you should really ask yourself is should i even bother using
toothpaste in the first place well for me i think it's a straight up
no and that's because although it was good it didn't quite do the job that i hoped
and if you're gonna clean your headlights and restore them wouldn't it be best just to do
it perfectly the first time around so there are better alternatives to try you can get yourself
dedicated headlight restoration kits you can get them that fit onto a power drill as well
but if you want to avoid all that then you can get yourself a putter compound for the price
of a toothpaste so it's not really a mega expensive job if you just want to tidy them up
so later on in the year we're going to be diving more in depth with restoring headlights we're
going to be talking about the compounds we're going to be wet sanding and then we're going to
be going through the best methods for protecting them to make sure that they don't come back
twice as cloudy because that is something a lot of people forget you just think oh we're going to put
toothpaste on it it's not always the case because they're still going to fog up just as quick
because there is no protective coating on top so that video is going to be a real eye-opener but i
want to be a little bit more in-depth and i know this is quite gimmicky for some of you out there
but i just wanted to do it because i had so many people message me saying look can you do it can
you feature it is it true is it a lie look it will make a little bit of an improvement but please
do not expect a miracle and if miracles are your thing then make sure you stick around for the
next video because we're going to be featuring auto glimm's very own scratch remover kit if
you want to know how to get rid of a scratch by hand and you do not want to use a machine because
you cannot be bothered or you simply don't want to spend hours and hours researching it
then make sure you hit the subscribe button and turn on those bell notifications because that
video is coming very soon and boy is it going to be a real eye-opener i'll see you later bye-bye