More on cleaning plastic headlight lenses

Question:

Your instruction in the October 2018 MOD for polishing plastic headlights was quite useful (“Cleaning cloudy headlights”). I’ve been doing it by hand on our ’93 Grand Marquis using a decades-old bottle of Nexus polish that was sold by a cycle shop for cleaning/ polishing helmet face shields. It works well on the Mercury, though I’ve had to re-do it every three to four months.

The Novus polish hasn’t worked at all on my ’99 Cadillac DeVille d’Elegance. Whereas the Mercury plastic was uniformly cloudy (oxidized is a fitting description), the Caddy’s plastic seems etched, and not uniformly. I think the Caddy’s plastic is different and perhaps harder. Would you recommend a change of technique?

Answer:

To remove all of the oxidation from your Caddy’s lenses I would scuff them using 1000-grit sandpaper and water until they become uniformly translucent but smooth to the touch. And then I would use a power buffer on low speed and CSI Ceram-X polish to buff the lens out to clear.

Finally, I would give them a coat of pure carnauba wax to preserve the luster. Ceram-X is expensive at $45 a bottle, but it is intended for professional use and contains no solvents that can cause your lenses to cloud up again. It is also superb for buffing out paint as well, which is its primary purpose. It is what many top body shops use to polish cars that are intended for show. You can purchase Ceram-X online at Amazon.com.