Has anyone had luck polishing or cleaning the plastic cover over the headlights? Mine are yellowing and the couple of time Ive tried cleaners they did not work.

 

Tooth paste with a tooth brush, it works.

Gee.

 

The problem I found with plastic lenses, is that once you get them polished to remove all the oxidation and discoloration, you've also removed the protective layer so they oxidize and discolor again fairly rapidly. The best solution I've found is this product:

or
https://www.cerakote.com/shop/cerako...-headlight-kit

Results were quite spectacular on my X350

 

I thought l heard that someone made replacement glass lenses a little while ago.

 

I don't think the glass lenses were ever produced because not enough orders were placed to justify the production costs.

 

First check this guys vid out
For yellowing lenses a bath in hydrogen peroxide and bathed in sunlight for a while removes the discoloration, you can use toothpaste with whitening agent (guess what that is) but you'll need a lot of past and patience. You can polish the lenses but must recoat them with an anti UV lacquer to stop the rapid degradation previously mentioned, there are a few such lacquers on the market but not sure what is available in the US.

Whilst you can do this with the light in the car be sure to mask up where you don't want to polish because this is a task that is best performed with a small DA - I've used my 2" polishing mops to do this using paint restoration products, no need for fancy kits. I did some headlights that were particularly bad by starting with P2000 wet and dry - done wet with soap and by hand.

Polishing may or may not remove the yellowing - depends how bad it is.

I did see an interesting item for this on a video but no details were published on what it was - I'm searching and will publish if I find it.

 

I was tremendously fortunate to find a pair of brand new-old-stock headlamps a while back, but before then, nothing seemed to work to get them back. Mine seemed to have yellowed inside out. So I went ahead and put the lamps in the oven for just a bit, regimes the lenses and tried to polish them from the inside. That helped, but not as much as I hoped it would. My next step was going to be to source a lot of early EURO glass lamps and try to Frankenstein the glass lenses to my facelift headlamp buckets (is that the name??) , but fortunately I was able to get the NOS headlamps around that time. Going to a “USA spec quad” arrangement was never an option for me.

 

Although I'm in the UK, bizarrely, I picked up one of the last set of US, plastic lens headlights a number of years go. Maybe it's time to sell them to one of you guys?

Paul

 

Im going to unclip the lenses, hand polish both inside and outsides of the lenses, finalize the project with 2 coats of ceramic on the exterior, and then a clear bra to get an exotic look out of the fishtanks.(the XJ40 fishtanks are the original inspiration for the facelift cars)

 

Brewtech,

Go easy when dismantling. I know one guy who tried the same on a glass facelift light and ended up breaking the glass.

I appreciate it may be different with the plastic units..

Paul

 

All XJS had “facelift style” sealed headlamps from the very start in 1975 all around the world except the USA …. They just changed them to “quads” in the USA between 1975-1991 because of U.S.A. regulations at the time. From 1992 onwards USA XJS just looked like all other XJS’s around the world looked from the start. Unrelated to the XJ40

 

I use Deep Woods Off bug spray, older can is green. It cleans the yellow right off instantly on my old van and other cars I've done. They stay clean for a while but will eventually need to be done again although I've never polished or protected them. It sure would eliminate half or most of the sanding process but here is a learning curve to wiping and leaving it clear. Has worked well for me for years.

 

I found the link to the process - it is Steam / Acetone -