having renovated the drivers side headlight a while ago, the old school way of varying grades of wet and dry down to 3000 grit, and then polished to death. To be fair i lost the will to live having spent ages and ages rubbing the surface until it was improved i didn't have the enthusiasm to do the passenger.....
Spurned on by seeing what others have done recently i felt it was time to try the Autoglym headlight restoration kit...
and today i set to.... like others with the B8 A5/S5 headlights as they are ventilated varying levels of crud, dust, small animals etc accumulate inside the headlight
there were a few specs of dust, but it bugged me... sadly the the headlights are not easy to split as others are in the Audi range, even baking them in the oven isn't successful.... So headlight removed and all covers off on the rear to see if there was a path through for a pokey stick to be worked and prodded...
Armed with a piece of TIG welding wire and some cotton buds i came up with this
and snaked it through the back till i made a difference
There went 2 hours of my life i'll never get back...!!! EXTREME care is needed that you don't scratch the inside of the lens or the black trim at the bottom, they mark far to easy, ask me how i know...!!!
Headlight back into place so it could be held securely....
This is what the passenger side started out like and onto unboxing the restoration kit, the Autoglym kit was well packaged and contained 1, drill attachment, 6no 800 grit discs, 6no 1500 grit, 1no 2000, 1no 3000, a foam pad polishing, a microfibre and a small bottle of polish.
I tried the drill attachment on a battery powered drill and started with a 800 grit as there were a few small stonechips.... the 800 wasn't man enough to cut into that and i found the using a drill for sanding awkward, the attachment really needs to suit a polishing machine type attachment.
Luckily i already have a 60mm velcro backing pad for my DA, so i used that and went to it with 800 grade pads.... they had absolutely no cut, so they got binned and i went old school...
800 grit wet and dry, cut into small pieces and some soapy water and sanded the lens until all the marks were gone....
I then went onto the 1500 grade and they were ok, they removed the previous 800 grade marks but not totally.
I would have rathered the 800 and 1500 grade to be suitable for a water application to prevent heat build up and not dry, they clogged to quickly and having tried a water application the glue which held the abrasive to the velco bit let go.... so that didn't work.
Out came the 1500 wet and dry until all the previous marks were gone....
The 2000 grit pad could have a water application and that and the 3000 grit worked very well....
A final polish with the white foam pad on my DA and the supplied polishing compound resulted in a decent level of clarity....
The kit was ok, but it wasn't great and definitely not worth the £25 it cost... there certainly wouldn't have been enough to do 2 headlights... which was a shame as i want to doo the TT's headlights.... A range of bodyshop grade 3M Trizact discs, which i know i can get in grades ranging from 600 down to 3000 in a 75mm size...
but it kept me busy for a day.....