Write-Up: Yellowed Corner Lenses

I tried the turtle wax brand that comes with the abrasive pads. Vast improvement, still not too satisfied, seem yellow. I probably didn't spend enough time on it, I wanted to get the CV but I couldn't find it locally and I'm too impatient to wait when I want to get something done. I think I will order the CV though.

It won't come totally clear. If you want perfection you've got to order new ones and resurface them.

there have been questions on this post about coatings after the prep work is done. wont a good acrylic laquer for plastic with uv work?

I could be an outlier but IMO yellow lenses say "my car's a p.o.s. and I don't care for it." Thank God our cars headlights are made of better stuff than Mercedes and Chrysler and we only have a problem with the corners.

AA wrote:

Thanks. I am proud of my Riv's age indicators! When I am old and gray, I'm not using just-for-men hair coloring. I will be a silver fox! (PS - they are yellowed, but polished clear, not oxidized).

Has anyone ever tried reversing the yellowing within the lens with a bit of metal polish (Brasso, or the Blue Magic metal polish) on a cloth swab secured to a stick, then polished out with a clean swab and mild soapy water. Or if you had any compound left over from front-of-lens polish, using same on inside of lens?

If the lens face could be removed from the reflector cleanly this would not be so tough.

Albertj

We all know how much of a PITA it is to remove the housing from the lens.... well, at least I do. It's impossible because of the plastic welding unless you want to cut them apart. Honestly, I really think they can be wetsanded and buffed because 90% of the time the discoloration is on the outside of the plastic.

DEMonte1997 wrote:

Honestly, I really think they can be wetsanded and buffed because 90% of the time the discoloration is on the outside of the plastic.

A lot of it is on the outside, but if you just do the outside of them, they still look yellowed. I know because I did it. Going to have to get at the inside of the lenses or buy new ones.

I think the Riv does look much better with clear corners.

Steve,
Please let us know how you make out if you try polishing the inside of the lenses.
I've purchased the 3M kit to do them but haven't bothered yet because almost everyone that has severely yellowed corner lenses say that there is still yellowing from the inside of the older unit's after wet sanding and polishing the outside's.
So, i have come to the conclusion that complete replacement with new was the only real answer and that hasn't been on the top of my spending budget yet. Please tell me it is possible to clean /polish the insides successfully and how.
I can always use the 3M polishing kit for my G/F's headlights. They need it.
Rick

i purchased the 3M kit on a whim yesterday when I was waxing and washing the outside and cleaning the wheels. I wasn't too optimistic about the kit, considering most everything that says "restore to like new" is a bunch of bull. Anyway, I tried the kit, and it's truly amazing how good it worked. My cornering lights now actually match my headlights in color. The yellow basically disappeared. Sure the kit includes everything that you could get seperately for probably a hell of a lot less, but the instructions and everything being laid right out for you made it extremely easy. Took me less than 30 minutes to do both and they literally do look brand new. I don't have the yellowing inside so maybe my results were better than others, but I gotta say I'm impressed.

I bought that 3M kit probably 6 months ago and it still sits on the shelf.

I figured it wasn't going to do anything and i got lazy, so now I have to use it before the winter.
Thanks for the info.
Rick

Edit: Looking back it's been 10 months. I will try it now before the snow falls after looking at the success rate.

FWIW the new corners I pre-treated with Crystal View a year ago haven't yellowed a bit.

But they've been garaged and under a cover almost the whole time.

Jack the R wrote:

FWIW the new corners I pre-treated with Crystal View a year ago haven't yellowed a bit.

But they've been garaged and under a cover almost the whole time.

Well, even though I'd hoped that GM had corrected the plastic used (yeah, right! ), being garaged is also what I attribute the life of my 'new' lenses to...

P.S. - Kyle, what is the exact name/number of the 3M kit you used? And how about some pics?

I have never used any of the kits being sold, but have had good luck sanding and buffing. I DA sand with 800 grit then buff with 3M micro finishing compound. I have had success with this method on probably 100 lamps.Just make sure to secure lamp and keep buffer moving. I stayed on a spot to long once and ditorted the lens pretty badly. If you dont have a DA sander, you could wet sand. I would recommend starting with 400 grit on lenses that are chipped and stratched until lens is smooth. Then use finer paper up to atleast 1000 grit before buffing. Up to 1500 grit would be ideal.

Here's a link to a picture of what it looks like now. Unfortunately I don't have a before picture, but you can imagine. It's the typical unflushed toilet bowl yellow.

https://2img.net/r/ihimizer/img530/6277/imag0164sl.jpg

Unfortunately neither the camera I have with me or the lighting does the drastic change justice. Believe me, it made a huge difference.

Looks great - especially with all that white paint around it that would set off any discoloration...

GMFreak8 wrote:

Here's a link to a picture of what it looks like now. Unfortunately I don't have a before picture, but you can imagine. It's the typical unflushed toilet bowl yellow.

https://2img.net/r/ihimizer/img530/6277/imag0164sl.jpg

Unfortunately neither the camera I have with me or the lighting does the drastic change justice. Believe me, it made a huge difference.

I can believe you when you mention the Toilet Bowl Yellow color, which is what mine our.
I bought that 3M kit 10 months ago and never used it. Now I will. Thanks for waking me up.

And for Eldo or whomever, the Kit I bought has a 3M P/N of 39008 on the package.

No problem guys. I'm still amazed by it. I can't believe how much better it makes the car look. The white paint really does bring out those things. It's hard as hell to keep clean as it is.

Rickw wrote:

And for Eldo or whomever, the Kit I bought has a 3M P/N of 39008 on the package.

Thank you, Rick.

Sorry eldo, didn't see your request for the part number. I'll look at my kit later after work.

I have a bottle of 3M plastic polish and another of plastic cleaner if anyone wants those PNs. They've worked quite well on any clear plastic lenses I've had to buff.

So I purchased a kit from O'Reiley's for the headlights and Corner Lamps. I also bought nightshade for the corner lights, blinkers, tail lights, and rear sidemarker lamps. HID's are coming soon. The headlight kit worked pretty good to clean them up here are some before pics:





After pics will come tommorow lol. It was the rain-x kit for like ten bucks.

Do our daytime running lamps use the high beams or the low beams?

I may have figured out my question the drl's are high beams just dimmer(which i suspected) so drls do not need to be disabled to run hid's because you would use the lows but if you wanted to also put hid's in the highs you would need to disable drl's.

Correct. The high-beam bulbs run in series (thus half-power) for DRL duty, and parallel for actual high-beams.

Hey guys, I got a $20 credit on Amazon all of a sudden, and recommended to me was the TurtleWax headlight restore kit. For $8, I decided to try it out, and man does it work! My lights weren't necessarily in distress to start with, but they look brand new after maybe 15 minutes of work. Perhaps this would work for yellow corner lamps on the Riv? Would definitely take a good amount of time. I can recommend it pretty strongly given the results, although my car has plastic lenses. Not sure how well it would work on glass.

Click for link:


Here's some before and after shots:

Wow! works good!