Why won't toothpaste clean my headlights? I have a friend who cleaned his headlights on his '72 Chevy with toothpaste and they looked great but when I tried it on my '89 Mustang they just clouded up. Why didn't it work for me? How can I get them back clear again?
The answer is simple. The chevy has glass headlights while the ford has acrylic or plastic. Glass can be cleaned with toothpaste and polish. Plastic is much softer and cannot be exposed to abrasives without suffering the damage you describe. You should only use a pure liquid non abrasive acrylic lens deoxidizer on plastic / acrylic headlight lens. Once you cloud them up with abrasive cleaners its a long multiprocess way back to clarity.
They might need buffing. My headlights were really foggy all the time even after a wash. The dealer told me they needed buffing bad. They offered to do it for $75.00, I went to Wal-Mart and got a buffing kit. It worked great for less than 10 bucks. Try buffing I bet that it what is wrong with them. It sure sounds like mine. Mine looked scratched and you couldn't even see the bulb until after they were buffed.
The '72 Chevy probably has glass headlights. Your '89 Ford very likely has plastic, which is cheaper than glass, but will get etched with road debris, sand/salt mixture, etc. When I got my son his first car, the headlights were fairly heavily etched - we took it to a body shop and had them "wet-buffed" to improve the light projection. It cost about $75, and did improve the appearance and functionality of the lights. But be aware that they can only take off so much of the etching, as it's basically sanding down the plastic protecting the light. If it really bad you can replace the entire headlight housing - for my son's Escort, it would have been about $100 per light!
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