I just finished restoring the headlights on my sisters 03 Cavalier and thought I would share my process and results with you guys. I've seen quite a few posts from people complaining about their lights (corners usually) turning yellow but I've never seen anything about fixing them. Sorry, the pictures arent the best since it was really overcast today. This was what I used:

1500 grit sandpaper
Sanding block
Optimum no rinse mixed at quick detailer strength
Meguiars PlastX plastic polish
Meguiars applicator pad

The lights looked like this when I started:




First I taped off the area immediately around the headlights. I would have removed them but I was short on time and these lights arent hard to get to with them in the car. After this I wetsanded the light with 1500 grit sandpaper. I didnt soak the paper in water, I just sprayed it and the light liberally with my quick detailer. After wetsanding and cleaning up the residue the light was hazed over like this:


To cut through the haze I polished the light using Megs PlastX on a Megs applicator pad. PlastX contains diminishing abrasives so I put a little elbow grease into it. After final polishing the light looked like this:


As you can see this is a huge improvement. The before pics didnt really show just how bad the lights looked before. They were really yellow and hazy. The lights arent perfect but I only spent about 20 minutes per light on this. When I have more time I will go back and touch up a few spots that arent perfect yet. I would like to see if some rattle can clear coat would seal them up and keep this from happening again.

Comments/Questions/Suggestions welcome.

 

looks good, try to get some pics further away from the car a lil, it might show up better

 

Thanks. I tried but there just wasn't enough light to get the true condition of the lights to show up in the before pics.
I mostly posted this because I've seen people complaining about corner lights turning yellow but never see anything about people fixing them. You could do what I did for less than $15 if you have to buy everything I used. I already had everything except the PlastX, which was only $4.

 

damn not bad for a $15 mod

 

True, 1500 and 2000 grit wet paper and some polish will do wonders.

 

Big differance! Looks good!

 

Thanks, they look pretty much new. You have to look really closely to see the remaining defects and I will probably take care of those next weekend.