Foggy Headlights Fix

[PuntoHowTo]

I haven't seen anyone mention T-Cut. I use this once a year just before the MOT is due. The T-Cut I'm using is a lot older than the 5 years I've owned the car, it was bought for a previous car and is the wrong colour for my present car's paintwork. It takes just a few drops and a few minutes of rubbing with an old rag then a buff with a clean rag to get the headlights sparkling.

I think things have moved on a bit from the days of “that’ll T-Cut out” t-cut became a bit of a joke and these days the shelves of halfords are full of all sorts of better alternatives

 

[Steve Swan]

I think things have moved on a bit from the days of “that’ll T-Cut out” t-cut became a bit of a joke and these days the shelves of halfords are full of all sorts of better alternatives

Sorry - I missed that joke. T-Cut is still a good product if you want to quickly add a bit of life back to faded paintwork without going overboard with cutting compounds, mops/polishes and ceramic coatings. To my knowledge T-Cut was never advertised as a headlight restorer so I thought it might be helpful to mention that it works well for the task.

 

[Bonefish Blues]

As you say, for an annual polish it'll be just fine. There's a plethora of products that'll do a good job, but the little and often approach is a good one, rather than having to do a restoration when they've gone fully yellow.

 

[PuntoHowTo]

Technically speaking the reason headlights go yellow and break down is because it is a coating on the plastic that becomes damaged by the sun light, which is why it can be polished off and the headlights restored. once removed they will not go yellow in the same way again,. If you just lightly polish the surface then its going to take a long time to get rid of the coating and you are just making more work for yourself.


When I say there better products, What I mean is there are plenty of products better than T-cut that you don't need to machine polish with.
Also with modern paints they are almost always clear coated anyway so coloured waxes like T-Cut colour are pointless and the T-cut compound is not really going to do any better job than any other good quality polish.