Polishing headlights with toothpaste

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Modern headlight lenses have long been made of plastic rather than glass. This replacement has one significant drawback: with a long period of use of the car, the glass near the headlights begins to become cloudy and loses its transparency. Hence the scattering of the light beams, there is no clear edge of illumination, resulting in only blinding light for oncoming cars and no benefit from shining headlights over a long distance.

Why does the headlight glass become cloudy and yellow?

The thing is that plastic, unlike glass, does not have such hardness. When operating the machine, this glass is exposed to various mechanical particles: small pebbles, large dust, sand, tree branches, etc. All these particles and objects leave microcracks on the glass, which are not visible to the naked eye. Yes, even if you wipe off the dust from the headlight with a dry cloth, this will also cause micro damage to the glass. As a result, dust and dirt accumulate into these microcracks, and the glass becomes cloudy and yellow.

Polishing with toothpaste

To get rid of this drawback, you need to polish the glass. Polishing will remove the top microlayer of plastic along with cracks and smooth out all irregularities.
To polish the headlight glass, we will not use scarce and expensive polishes. We'll make do with regular toothpaste. Yes, yes, toothpaste perfectly polishes surfaces, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s glass, metal or plastic.

Headlight polishing process

There is no need to remove the headlight from the car! I was just doing a major overhaul of my car, so I removed it, but you can repeat my process without removing either the glass or the headlights.
The first thing you need to do is clean the headlight from dirt and dust in the usual way. Spray the headlights with any detergent and wipe dry.

If you have a choice of detergents, then preference should be given to those that contain isopropyl alcohol.
Then apply toothpaste and spread it thicker. And we begin to polish with an ordinary towel, which you don’t mind. I polished by hand using quick movements, but if you have electric polishers, you can use them. I rubbed the headlight for about five minutes without stopping.

Next, wash everything off with water. Again, generously spray with detergent and wipe the glass with a dry towel.

The result is noticeable and I like it. Repeat polishing with toothpaste.
After the second polishing, the result is better, and the yellow coating is still visible on the towel, despite repeated polishing.