The Ford Ranger had yellowed, clouded headlights -- past hazy and into MOT risk territory. Six-stage polish restored clarity and takes years off the truck.
The headlights on this Ford Ranger had gone well past hazy -- the polycarbonate was yellowed and clouded enough to be an MOT concern, and they made a fairly new truck look considerably older than it was.
New lenses leave the factory with a thin UV-inhibiting coating bonded to the outside of the plastic -- the same principle as a UV filter on a pair of glasses. It wears away gradually through washing and road exposure, and once it is gone the bare polycarbonate has no protection against the sun. That is the point at which the hazing accelerates; it is not surface dirt but the plastic itself breaking down.
We ran the lenses through our six-stage headlight restoration -- wet sanding from a coarser grit through progressively finer grades, then compounding and polishing until the plastic was clear again. The Ford Ranger has particularly large lens surfaces, so the before-and-after contrast is striking.
Polishing alone restores the clarity but leaves the plastic unprotected again. We follow every restoration with a ceramic coating -- a three-year grade on headlights -- which reinstates the UV barrier that the factory coating provided. A ceramic coating applied properly tends to outlast its stated grade; customers generally do not find themselves back two years later with the same problem.
Replacement headlight units for a Ford Ranger run to around £150 each for aftermarket parts -- over £300 for the pair before any fitting. A restoration costs considerably less, keeps the original units, and with a ceramic coating on top the result lasts.
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