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Headlamp Polish Your headlamp beams drill a tunnel of light into the gloom of a deserted country lane. Unfortunately, it’s not a very deep or bright tunnel. You have to slow the car to a crawl, otherwise you’ll overdrive the headlights. But it’s not a pea-soup-thick fog that’s causing the problem. So why can’t you see farther than a couple of car lengths ahead of your vehicle? Once safely home and parked, you leave the headlights on and walk to the front of your car, fully expecting that one of your low beams has burned out. Wrong. They’re both lit—but a closer inspection reveals that the lenses of your headlamp assemblies are frosted over. And it’s not just dirt. The plastic lens itself is as cloudy as a bathroom mirror right after a shower. No wonder you can’t see. Clearing away hazeMost cars and a lot of trucks today are manufactured with headlamp assemblies that use quartz-halogen bulbs plugged into the back of a large plastic reflector. The outer surface of these headlamp modules is molded polycarbonate plastic. That plastic is much lighter than glass and far more resistant to stone chips and cracks. However, after a few years of exposure to sunlight and atmospheric chemicals, polycarbonate has a tendency to get hazy. Severely neglected lenses can actually pit and develop a network of fine cracks, called craze, which makes the job of fixing them tougher. It’s worth a shot, though—and you’ll need only a few bucks’ worth of materials to get the job done. Sure, these assemblies are easy to replace, but they can be very expensive. A pair of lenses for a luxury car can cost as much as a thousand dollars. Woof.Fortunately, there’s a simple and inexpensive solution. Unlike glass, the polycarbonate plastic can be polished back to a surface as smooth as new, in a procedure that won’t take more than a half-hour.
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