I bought the 3M Ultra Headlight Restoration kit which contains 500, 800, 3000 grit hook and loop sanding discs plus clear coat pads. Well, the top cover of our headlights is thick and the 500 grid does not touch it. As you will see in the pictures below, half the headlight had this layer peeled of and the rest was not coming off with a 500 grit sanding disc. So, this is what I did: (on both sides of course, showing one side)

Manually sanded the headlights (by hand) using:

- 320 grit (by far the longest time spent here removing the top coat of the headlight - talking an hour or two)
- 400 grit
- 500 grit
- 800 grit
- 1500 grit
- 2000 grit
- 3000 grit (this and following steps on a drill)
- Meguiar's 2 - Fine Cut Cleaner
- Meguier's 205 - Ultra finishing Polish
- Clear coat ( from the 3M kit)

The headlights look fine now.


Right before the start of the process

See how half the headlight has it top cover gone

After sanding with 320 grit paper

After 400 grit paper

After 500 grit paper

After 800 grit paper

After 1500 grit paper

After 2000 grit paper

After 3000 grid disc

After Meguiar's Fine-cut cleaner

After Meguiar's Ultra Finishing Polish

After 3M clear coat

 

Nice work, they do look great.
Just how many hrs did it take, to make them look like this?

 

Total I would say 6 hours. This is my first headlight restoration ever. Now that I have done it and know the ins and outs I would say I can get it down to 4. The hardest part is removing the top layer and that takes a lot of elbow grease. You have to be patient. If you have ADD or ADHD forget it. If you only had to deal with dull, yellowing lights then this time gets cut down significantly.