Severely Weathered Headlight Covers

[stealth IS350]

for the first time i looked at my headlight covers and they look like they are 20 years old. they have a weird wear and looked oxidized and badly beaten from the elements. I live in cali in the palm desert area and have had the car for about a year and a half. anyone else have this issue? if so did the dealer take care of it?

[terry993]

I had the same problem from driving to Vegas years ago in my Porsche and encountering a brief sand storm. Cost me about $75 each glass. Lexus should be less. On April 30, I narrowly escaped the sand storm in Indio that picked up with 50 mph winds just as I made it into the hotel parking garage. It is not covered under warranty.

[bartkat]

There are vaious plastic polishing compounds you can use to clear that up. Mequiar's makes one that's usually available at auto parts stores. If that's not strong enough you can use an extra fine rubbing compound. Some people use like 1000 grit abrasive, and then polish after that. I've never had to go so far as using the abrasive paper though. I used Turtle mild rubbing compound on an old Nissan and that cleaned them up real well on the first try.

[smooth1]

I've used Flitz plastic polish kit and glass polish kit and that had amazing results! I was skeptical about it, but when I was done they looked brand new again!

[lovetoskico]

I think...but am not completely sure, but if you polish or shine up the headlight covers too much you can actually promote future degredation of the lens as they are manufactured with a "UV" protectant film. Hence, when you go to town on your headlight covers, you may be removing a significant amount of UV protecant.

For example, on my old Toyota, I polished my faded headlight covers with a mildy agressive 3M polish. Headlights looked great for a few months and they slowly started to fade back (living in southern Cali). They ended up worse to much worse than originally started in a period of maybe 9-12 months.

I purchased a "headlight restoration" kit professional series on a whim from a local auto parts store, followed the 3 or 4 wet sanding steps (going from a 400 or 500 grit and ending up using a 2000 grit paper), then applied their special "uv protectant solution" using a supplied applicator pad. Headlights still look very close to new a couple years later.

Just my two cents.

[smooth1]

I think...but am not completely sure, but if you polish or shine up the headlight covers too much you can actually promote future degredation of the lens as they are manufactured with a "UV" protectant film. Hence, when you go to town on your headlight covers, you may be removing a significant amount of UV protecant.

For example, on my old Toyota, I polished my faded headlight covers with a mildy agressive 3M polish. Headlights looked great for a few months and they slowly started to fade back (living in southern Cali). They ended up worse to much worse than originally started in a period of maybe 9-12 months.

I purchased a "headlight restoration" kit professional series on a whim from a local auto parts store, followed the 3 or 4 wet sanding steps (going from a 400 or 500 grit and ending up using a 2000 grit paper), then applied their special "uv protectant solution" using a supplied applicator pad. Headlights still look very close to new a couple years later.

Just my two cents.

the only issue I have with this is that the UV coating isn't on the outside of the headlight. It's on the inside where the elements and carwashing can't take it off anyway. I think you just used a better quality headlight restoration system that had better sanding steps then you had done prior. Thier UV proctectant solution was probably more of an Acrylic polish that may have had some UV properties to it, but in order to keep you from going out buying Acrylic polish on your own, they called some UV secret sauce that only they have in thier kit.