UV protection

[Bruce]

Just polished my headlights. What can I use for UV protection?

[svono50]

A former plastic injection molding guy that I used to work with said that you 'should' be able to use clear acrylic spray paint. The 'should' is based on the quality of the lexan base material that the lens was molded with. Apparently some base lexans will 'melt/fog' when the acrylic paint fuses with the base lens. I know my friend's Corolla had that happen with the same clear gloss acrylic paint I used to seal my wife's former Forester headlights. Apparently clear acrylic has natural UV blocking capability. I know my wife's headlights didn't fog for the 1.5 years we owned it after I polished them and then coated them, FWIW.

[gbeaird]

Someone on this forum offered a polishing service for our headlights that I took advantage of. IIRC, they weren't coated with anything when done. While the work was awesome, the polish job lasted only about a year before the lenses turned yellow again, but at the time, the car lived outside most of the time. So yeah, the lenses will need some coating to last. I've heard that while most clear acrylic paints offer some UV protection, some are better than others, and there are those that are specifically-made with extra UV protection. I have no idea on those brands, but it's probably something you'll want to take the headlight modules to a professional painter for, but that's just me.

We opted for the repop headlights for our updates, removing the amber ones the car came with. So far, so good, but the car has yet to see more than about 20 minutes of daylight since installing them,

[svono50]

One other thing I forgot to mention is that lexan/polycarbonate is NOT UV stable, which is why a 'polished' headlight will absolutely fog/yellow in short order w/o a UV blocking layer. Factory headlights come with a very thin acrylic coating on them, which help protect the base polycarbonate material from deteriorating in the sunlight. Unfortunately, as that coating wears away over time, you headlight's 'sunblock' so to speak goes away and you get yellowed/fogged lenses.

I used Krylon "Crystal Clear" acrylic coating #1303 on the Forester headlights for reference. It is sensitive to high humidity when being applied, so make sure you do it when it is relatively dry out otherwise it will end up cloudy...ask me how I know! I put 5 coats on those headlights and did some light wet sanding/polishing after the last coat and it looked really good. YMMV.

[Bruce]

Thanks

[Erics SVO]

One other thing I forgot to mention is that lexan/polycarbonate is NOT UV stable, which is why a 'polished' headlight will absolutely fog/yellow in short order w/o a UV blocking layer. Factory headlights come with a very thin acrylic coating on them, which help protect the base polycarbonate material from deteriorating in the sunlight. Unfortunately, as that coating wears away over time, you headlight's 'sunblock' so to speak goes away and you get yellowed/fogged lenses.

I used Krylon "Crystal Clear" acrylic coating #1303 on the Forester headlights for reference. It is sensitive to high humidity when being applied, so make sure you do it when it is relatively dry out otherwise it will end up cloudy...ask me how I know! I put 5 coats on those headlights and did some light wet sanding/polishing after the last coat and it looked really good. YMMV.

I have a #1305 "UV Resistant gloss" saved in my amazon list. Was planning on using it on the SVO and my 2010 HID lenses (which have cataracts bad)....