Restoring 3 years after Sylvania Headlight Restoration?

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pasadena_commut

New member
Three years ago I used the Sylvania Headlight Restoration kit on the yellowed headlights of my 2003 Civic Hybrid. It held up pretty well until perhaps 6 months ago at which point it started to haze over. If the headlights are wet they look great, very clear. However, once they dry out most of the surface has a faint whitish haze and there are slightly yellowish broad horizontal streaks which I am fairly certain would line up with the way the final coat of the Sylvania kit was applied. My best guess is that the final coat, whatever it was, has yellowed very slightly, like the underlying plastic does, but has mostly accumulated a large number of fine scratches, cracks, or dings which are scattering light. When wet these are filled in, so it looks fine.

Supposedly the Sylvania kit has a lifetime warranty, but I could not find the receipt, so I`m guessing that making a claim might be a bit involved. Besides, the most likely outcome would be that they would just send me another kit.

Any chance of touching this up? A light polish perhaps? If possible I would like to avoid sanding it down to bare plastic and recoating with something else.

The year before the Sylvania kit was used I had wet sanded and polished and that looked fine for a year, then hazed over to a state much worse than what I am seeing now. I`m not at all sure that the methods used on the raw plastic would be appropriate on the Sylvania clear coat (or whatever that last layer was.) In any case, the Sylvania kit lasted 3X longer than a simple sand and polish, better, but not exactly a "lifetime" fix. Perhaps that has something to do with why I cannot find the Sylvania kit in any of the local auto parts stores any more.
 
3 years on the sylvania kit is impressive. Here in Southern California I only saw 6 months before the coating began to haze again. In my opinion I though the product was junk.

You may have to start over. By that I mean the sylvania coating to get to a fresh base.

To make it even easier on you, Meguiar`s came out with their perfect clarity headlight restoration kit which can be found locally. They guarantee up to 1 year. Autopia doesn`t have it on their site but their sister site has it. I`ve personally used it and it has lived up to it`s "up to 1 year" claim.

Meguiars Perfect Clarity Headlight Restoration Kit

If you wish to take it up a notch the opti-lens would be another product I recommend. It costs more and you won`t use all of it at once. I have had no issues with it. It`s been on my uncles van for a year and it is holding up strong.

Optimum Opti-Lens Permanent Headlight Coating

The last option would be to install some x-pel headlight film after the headlights are restored. I have this on my personal headlights. It`s been on for years and the film looks just as clear as when I bought it.
 
The Guz said:
3 years on the sylvania kit is impressive. Here in Southern California I only saw 6 months before the coating began to haze again. In my opinion I though the product was junk.
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This was in Pasadena, also Southern California. Because batteries hate high temperatures, and the IMA battery in this hybrid costs thousands to replace, I try very hard to park the car so that it doesn`t bake in direct sun. It also doesn`t see very much highway use. Both of these factors would tend to extend the life of any coating on the headlamps.


The Guz said:
You may have to start over. By that I mean the sylvania coating to get to a fresh base.
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Right, but before starting over, what would be a reasonable thing to try to clean up the existing coating?

I`m aware of the other products you mentioned. If the X-Pel (and other similar products) were $20 I would have applied those after the first sanding/polishing. The problem is that they run $70 or so, which is very nearly the price of a pair of cheap headlights for this car. There may be other issues with cheap headlights, but early oxidation isn`t one of them, so those headlights should last 7-8 years before they oxidize enough to be a problem again. By my calculations the cheap replacement headlights are going to come out less expensive in the long run than any restoration product which needs to be redone every year. That`s why I went with the Sylvania with its "lifetime" claim, for $25 (or thereabouts) it seemed like a good deal. Changing the headlights on a Civic doesn`t look very hard (as opposed to the total PITA it was on my previous car, a Protege). If it comes down to hours of hand sanding followed by applying some other "this may or may not work for very long solution" I`m probably going with the cheapo headlights this time.
 
So I had a go at it today.

1. washed the lights to get all the dirt off.

2. tried some Plastx with a damp sponge applicator pad. It made a very slight improvement, barely noticeable. Don`t bother.

3. applied a small amount of Turtle Wax Polishing Compound on a damp Scott blue shop towel. Polished by hand with the same towel, maybe 5-10 strokes total over each point. Wiped off the excess with another towel, then polished gently with a clean dry Scott blue shop towel to remove any excess.

At this point the headlights were as clear as they were immediately after the Sylvania kit had been applied 3 years ago. Either the polish removed the fine scratches in the coat from that kit, or it removed the final coat. Either way, a vast improvement for now.

4. Tried to seal the lights with the only thing I had on hand for this - Blue Magic Headlight Sealant. (I don`t believe Plastx`s claim that it provides lasting protection.) Applied by spraying on and then wiping across with a dry Scott blue shop towel. A couple of minutes later I remembered why I don`t like this stuff - it pulls into little beads on the lens surface, fairly regularly spaced. Not at all an even coat. So I gently wiped off those beads, and probably most of the rest as well.

Anyway, steps 1 through 3 took all of 5 minutes, so that was quick and easy and remarkably successful. Step 4 didn`t turn out so well. I guess for now I will just wait and see how long the headlights last in the current state. If it`s 5 minutes every 3 years, I can live with that!
 
I don`t know where Mequiars Clear Coat Safe Polishing Compound falls in terms of abrasivity between Plastx (too little, didn`t work) and the Turtle Wax product (worked, possibly too much), but if anybody else runs into this issue and has some on hand, it looks like a reasonable product to try if the goal is to retain the kit`s final coating while still removing the surface defects.
 
pasadena_commut said:
4. Tried to seal the lights with the only thing I had on hand for this - Blue Magic Headlight Sealant. (I don`t believe Plastx`s claim that it provides lasting protection.) Applied by spraying on and then wiping across with a dry Scott blue shop towel. A couple of minutes later I remembered why I don`t like this stuff - it pulls into little beads on the lens surface, fairly regularly spaced. Not at all an even coat. So I gently wiped off those beads, and probably most of the rest as well.
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Update 11/20/2016. The Blue Magic headlight sealant does seem to protect the underlying plastic. However, it has its own issues.

Dirt seems to stick to it, so that the headlights become hazy. The dirt washes off (mostly) with a little water and a wipe with a paper towel.

The sealer seems to yellow a bit itself over time, as if it is oxidizing. A rinse with water does not take this off. Wash the headlights with some detergent, rinse, and dry, and the yellow goes away. As does, most likely, the sealer. Reapply the sealer and the car is good to go for another couple of months.

The proper way to apply this stuff seem to be:

1. squirt a little on
2. wipe it across the plastic with a cloth or lint free paper towel
3. let it dry a long time. Overnight, for instance.
4. polish it slightly with a cloth or lint free paper towel

If it is only allowed to dry briefly the plastic will be covered by a field of little droplets as the sealer beads up.

I have reapplied it twice since the polishing, and each time the headlights return to full transparency, with the yellowing
gone. This is more work than the original Sylvania treatment, which was apply and forget about it for years. But it isn`t dreadful either.
It only takes a couple of minutes to wash just the headlights, dry them, apply the stuff, and then the next day do a quick polish. No extra time at all for the wash if you are washing the whole car. (Which we only do rarely, with the drought.)

Anyway, it does seem to protect the plastic underneath to some extent, because if that was hazing/yellowing it wouldn`t really matter what sort of goop was applied, the headlight would still be hazed.
 
I would not bother with most over the counter headlight protectants. They just don`t live up to the claim. The only one that has shown to last is the Meguiar`s headlight coating from their perfect clarity kit. The good news is that Meguiar`s listened to the customer and is now selling it as an individual item.

Meguiars Keep Clear Headlight Coating Coming Soon!

A coating will outlast most of these as well. Opti-Lens, DLUX, Gyeon trim are just a few examples of products sold through Autopia.

The other product that gets high praise is the Innovative Detailing Solutions Headlight UV Spray Sealant.
 
The Guz said:
I would not bother with most over the counter headlight protectants. They just don`t live up to the claim.
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As far as I can tell nobody sells a product which is remotely as effective as the original factory coatings. Factory headlights are usually clear for at least 5 years, fail gradually after that, and are totally hazed over by 10 years. (Plus or minus a few years, depending on UV exposure rate.) The Sylvania coating held up for 3 years on my car, the Meguiar`s product you mention has a 1 year guarantee, which doesn`t inspire a lot of confidence that it will still be clear at 3 years. Consumers see all these products advertised but there is little or no independent testing so it is very hard to know what to buy. Reports on forums such as this, including my own, are all anecdotal - single data points on poorly controlled experiments.

It amazes me that the DOT and NHTSA have not addressed this problem. Back when headlights were glass they were clear for the life of the car. (Also really inexpensive and super easy to replace, just not so great in a crash.) Nowadays perhaps 25% of the cars I see are hazed to some extent and 5% are so badly hazed that the headlights only serve as dim "there`s a car here" markers for other drivers - they don`t throw nearly enough light to support safe driving. Surely people are being injured or killed because of these bad headlights. Even stranger, the federal headlight rules:

eCFR 49.6.571_1108 Code of Federal Regulations

are clearly deficient. The required testing is only for 3 years (albeit in Florida or Texas), whereas cars are often on the road for decades. I suspect the Feds don`t specify a longer field exposure test because there may not be a plastic/coating combination around which lasts significantly longer than what we have now. The rules say nothing about headlight design that would make repairing this sort of normal damage easy or inexpensive. For instance, and this is not the only possible approach - "the front surfaces of the headlight assemblies must be flat rectangular, and field replaceable". That has the potential for being ugly, but it isn`t that difficult a constraint, and the car designers could probably still churn out attractive vehicles that met that requirement.
 
You are correct. OTC products are not meant to last. They are a band aid fix. I hated the performance of the sylvania kit. After 5-6 months the headlights were yellow again.

The Meguiar`s coating has lasted over a year on my uncles lights and they look good. A ceramic coating is the option I would choose for something to last longer than any OTC products.

Talk to the guy at Innovative Detailing Solutions. He will go into further detail about headlights.

You could always re-clear the lights if you are looking for a long term fix.
 
The Guz said:
I hated the performance of the sylvania kit. After 5-6 months the headlights were yellow again.
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Had the headlights been worked on previously? I had wet sanded mine several months earlier. When they began to yellow I gave the Sylvania kit a try. However, I did not use it exactly like they said. I used the sandpaper and polish I already had on hand, and didn`t mess with their coatings until the lights were once again pristine. So I`m pretty confident there wasn`t a spec of the original coating on the plastic. People who have never previously sanded their headlights and just follow the kit instructions, or have coated them with something else, are most likely applying the Sylvania protectant over a heterogeneous surface rather than a single plastic. I would expect the former to be much more failure prone than the latter.

In theory the Sylvania kit has a lifetime warranty. Unfortunately the paperwork disappeared in the intervening 3 years, so I cannot say what happens if one tries to make a claim.

What does "ceramic" mean when people speak of it in this context? Most ceramic materials are opaque and the few that are not are still basically rocks (look up "Yttralox"). Perhaps if those were ground finely they could be mixed in with the plastic coating, but beyond providing a spiffy sounding marketing term, I do not know what good that would do.
 
pasadena_commut said:
Had the headlights been worked on previously?.
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Nope. Wet sanded and compounded with M105. Prepped them and finally used the Sylvania coating. About 5-6 months later the headlights were yellow once again.

pasadena_commut said:
What does "ceramic" mean when people speak of it in this context? Most ceramic materials are opaque and the few that are not are still basically rocks (look up "Yttralox"). Perhaps if those were ground finely they could be mixed in with the plastic coating, but beyond providing a spiffy sounding marketing term, I do not know what good that would do.
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You can get a lot of info on the forum searching those products I listed. That will do a better job in describing what they do than I can.
 
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