Polish headlight & windshield?

[3.5POWER]

Whats the best way to clean headlights and the instrument cluster glass from small scratches? Also my windshield is covered with small stone scratches..

[tdaily]

Not a whole lot you can do for the windshield except have the larger scratches and/or rock marks repaired at a local shop. As far as the headlights go, the best thing to do is to get a chep buffer ($15~20 at Walmart), some cheap rubbing compound, a little polish and get to work. It only takes about 10 or 15 minutes of polishing on the headlights to get them smooth and shiny again. You can also use the compound and polish on your cluster using just a rag and some elbow grease.

[rule da road]

This guy got into a front end accident and had to replase his headlight fixture. Brand New, compared to mine, mine looks YELLOW!! Think of a beautiful chlorinated pool vs. hot tapp water. I thought I had to get behind the plastic covers (if poss) and wipe clean. SO, ur sayin just compound the front of the plastic and that'll remove the YELLOW? 3.5, was that ur problem? Do u have to use the buffer for 10 min or will hand do? Why polish?

[tdaily]

I had the same problem. I bought a 96 and the guy that owned it before me replaced the headlights with new ones just for the looks of them. They made the headlights on my 97 look like complete crap. The headlights on my 97 were very, very cloudy looking and had that constantly dirty look. I assume yours are about the same. The easiest way to tell is to run your hand lightly over the outside of the headlight and see if they feel rough. Normally they should feel real smooth like any other plastic/glass surface, but after these headlights get a little old they tend to get beat up and rough.

So I did exactly what I recommended to you. The rubbing compound will get out the big scratches and rough spots. The polish will get out the smaller scratches left by the compound. Think of it like sanding a piece of wood with a very rough piece of sandpaper to smooth out the big gaps and splinters and then sanding with a fine grit sandpaper to smooth out the surface. Its basically the same thing with different grit compounds and polishes.

Getting rid of that rough stuff is a lot easier with a buffer, although you can try it with a rag it'll take a lot of work, and your end result may not be as good. Either way though your headlights will look 1000% better if you can smooth that surface down.

[rule da road]

WHAT a fix!! I hope this works, time to get to work. I have no scratches, its just yellow as piss. Others, u'll only see this if u compare to a new headlight. I have brite lights and thought it was whiter! HAHA. Oh and those fogs are gonna love me after this. I'll let u know. Thanks!!