Tag Headlight Restoration

Howdy folks, Ed here. Welcome back to Bullnose Garage. This obviously is not a Bullnose; this is my 2007 Ford F-150. It served me well for a lot of years. I’ve never had an issue with it, which is why I keep it around, and it’s basically my daily driver. But it is getting a little bit long in the tooth, and, uh, every now and then I like to spruce it up. Makes her feel better, makes me feel better, you know, and it’s good all around.

So today’s little bit of sprucing up is going to be fixing these old faded headlights. And I don’t know if you can see very well in the light of the setting sun, but, uh, this is pretty cloudy over here, and then this one over here is the same exact way. They’re pretty bad. So fixing that actually isn’t that hard. It takes just a little bit of sandpaper, some time, and some clear coat. And the clear coat that I’m going to be using is, uh, the good stuff. It’s SprayMax 2K clear. I actually have it left over from doing the wheels on my wife’s Explorer, so I figure, well, I got the can open and got some left, I may as well go ahead and, uh, use it on my headlights. And this stuff is, uh, the good stuff, so this should last the rest of the life of the truck. I should never have a problem with this yellowing or fading ever again once I get this done. And hey, you know, depending on how much, uh, orange peel there is at the end, I might even get a chance to use my new buffer, so that could be fun. Stick around!

Luckily for me, the headlights on an F-150 of this generation, generation, luckily, luckily for me, the headlights on this generation of F-150 are really easy to remove, and it’s going to be a whole lot easier doing this job with the headlights off the truck. So that’s what I’m going to do. As you can see, I’ve already done some work on both of these headlights. Unfortunately, I had some issues with my phone while I was filming the actual sanding down of these two, but, uh, even after doing a round of sanding, this one here is still a little bit junky down here at the bottom, so I am going to do some aggressive sanding down here to see if I can’t take care of some of this stuff. I’m going to use, uh, 220 grit, uh, to try to take out some of this stuff down here. Now, if I can’t get it, it’s not a big deal; it’s just this bottom part of the headlight, and the other one doesn’t really have as much of that problem. There is a little bit, uh, but the other one looks a little bit better. So like I said, I’m going to go start over basically with this one, and, uh, I’ll walk you through what I’m going to do.

So I’ve got all of my sandpaper already sort of, uh, cut up and ready to go. I’m going to start with 220 grit; that’s pretty aggressive for a headlight just to get, uh, a lot of this nastiness out of here. And then I’m going to move to 400 grit, and then I’m going to move to 600 grit, and then I’m going to move to 2,000 grit. At each level, I’ll be using water to make sure that, uh, I don’t put deep gouges or scratches inside the finish here. And, um, I’m going to start with a swirling motion because that’s the most aggressive to get, uh, all this stuff off of here. And then once the swirling motion has been laid in and I’ve got as much of this off as I think I can get, then I’ll do a horizontal sand like this to get rid of the swirl marks and make everything look nice and uniform. That’ll make the, uh, clear coat sort of get in there easier and make it look a little bit nicer with the clear coats on.

So again, the way we’re going to do this is we’re going to start with 220. I’m going to do swirls, then I’m going to do back and forth, and then we’re going to do 400, same thing, swirls, back and forth, and then 600, swirls, back and forth, and then 2,000, swirls, back and forth. And when we’re done, hopefully this will look about like this, except some of this crap down here will be gone. But we’ll see. I’m not sure I can get all this out of here, but we’re going to try it again. Yeah, it looks to me like I got some of that garbage off of there. Looks much better than it did. So I think we’re ready to mask and, uh, clean them up with some isopropyl alcohol and then clear coat.

While we’re waiting for these to dry, I just want to make a note. If you watched the episode where I painted the rims on my wife’s Explorer, then you’ve already heard me say this, but, uh, I’ll say it again here for those of you that didn’t. You always want to make sure that you’re going to wear a respirator when you’re working with a clear like this 2K clear. This is actually, um, a two-part clear coat. It is just like the stuff that you would use in a spray booth, uh, spraying a car, except that it’s in a rattle can. So, um, the catalyst in there can be pretty rough, so you want to make sure that you’re well ventilated and that you use a respirator. A lot of times I don’t wear respirators when I’m spray painting, but with this stuff, I always do. So, word of the wise.

Here we go, guys, the final product, and I gotta tell you, I am super, super impressed. I, uh, I thought maybe I was going to have to sand and do some buffing or, you know, wet sanding or something to get rid of the orange peel on this, and there is a little bit; you can see it, um, you know, if I move it around. I’m not sure how the lights reflecting back to the camera, but, um, you can see just a little bit of orange peeling there. But man, you know, I don’t think it’s enough for me to have to worry about wet sanding and buffing and going through that whole thing, so I think I am just going to leave these the way that they are. Uh, there’s a couple of little spots in here where I can feel, uh, contaminant got in; that’s probably just dust in the air from my garage. It’s not a super clean garage, so, um, but that’s fine. They certainly look a whole lot better than they did, uh, practically brand new. And you know this stuff is going to last a good long time, so, uh, I’m super happy with that.

The next thing we’re going to do before we put these back on the truck is just give them a real quick wax. Uh, I mean, it’s clear coat, so we’re going to wax it just like you’d wax your vehicle’s paint job. So pretty much any kind of car wax will work for this. I just happen to be using Meguiar’s Deep Crystal Carnauba Wax, but, uh, pretty much anything that you can pick up from, you know, auto parts store or even Walmart would work for this. If you’ve never waxed a vehicle before, it’s h pretty simple. Just make sure that you shake the wax up real good if it’s liquid wax. Oh, love the smell of carnauba wax in the morning. Put your wax on a clean cloth; you’re not going to do very much for this. They just, uh, just headlights, and then, uh, just wipe it on.

All right, and then we’ll set this one off to the side to dry, then do our next one. Once you’ve got your wax on, you just want to let it sit for a little while so it can dry. Uh, how long it takes is going to depend on the temperature, but you’ll know that it’s dry because you’ll see a hazy sort of film on there that, uh, looks a little bit dry, like dry wax. Dumbass. All right, try again. Once you’ve got your wax on there, you just want to give it the time. Give it the time. Once you’ve got your wax on, just give it a little bit of time to dry, and then once it’s dry, just wipe it off, and you’re good to go. All waxed up. The wax just serves as an extra protective coating just like it would on the clear coat on the rest of your vehicle, uh, to try to get this stuff to last as long as possible. And whenever I wash the vehicle and wax the vehicle, I will make sure to wash and wax these headlights now, uh, just like they’re a regular part of the paint because basically with a clear coat on them, they are.

Oh, here we have the final product, and I got to say I’m pretty happy with that. All it took was just a little bit of prep work, some sanding, a little bit of clear coat, and about 24 to 48 hours of cure time, and just a little bit of wax. And here we have basically what looks like brand new headlights. And now when you get real close, you can see the orange peel, but from just a little ways away, you really can’t see it at all. And no matter what, it looks way better than it did, and it’s going to last a good long time. So as always, if you have any questions, comments, concerns, gripes, internet ramblings, stick them below. Thanks again for watching, guys. We will see you next time.

Hello, hi folks, and here welcome back to Bullnose Garage for the first time in a couple of years. Um, I just want to go a really quick video to kind of give everybody an update about what’s going on, what’s going on with me, what’s going on with the channel, that kind of stuff. Um, I know I’m not a very big channel, so I don’t imagine I’ve got, you know, thousands of subscribers who are clamoring about what’s my next video going to be. Uh, but I do know I had a few folks who were very interested in the build of my truck that, um, kind of wonder what happened because I fell off the face of the Earth. Um, when COVID hit, um, a whole lot of stuff all happened at one time. Um, health-wise, family-wise, finance-wise, um, job-wise, all kinds of stuff sort of all happened all at once. Um, you know, we’ve got a couple of twin girls that we had, um, and I had those before I started my other video series or started this video series. But, uh, you know, they’re growing up and being a dad is a lot of work if you want to do it right. So, uh, I just didn’t have time to do the video thing. Doing YouTube videos, if you want to do them right and have high production value, it’s hard work. Um, you know, there are a lot of hours you have to sit at computers and do video editing and manipulation and, you know, cut together hours of footage into, you know, a video that’s worth watching for people out there in YouTube land. So, um, with everything going on, I just didn’t have time to keep up with it. But I also didn’t have time to keep up with the truck. Uh, so, uh, it’s still there. It’s right on the other side of this wall, actually. Um, and, uh, it still runs like a top. It runs great. Um, I’ve done a couple of things to it since I stopped making videos. I did record those things, so I have the footage. Um, I will make videos about that stuff, so I don’t want to do any work on that truck, uh, without making a video about it so that you guys know exactly what’s going on and everything that I’ve done to it will be documented. And, um, you know, so don’t worry about that. When I get a chance to get the videos out, I will. Um, I do have still plans. I still want to drop a 351 in the truck. I still want to, you know, upgrade all the suspension components and do a paint job and all this different stuff. It’s still in the cards. Um, it’s just, you know, anybody who’s got a project vehicle knows that, uh, generally a project vehicle is your bottom priority. And when, uh, life happens, a lot of time that’s why you see people with project vehicles sitting in their backyard with weeds growing around because, you know, life happens and projects just don’t get the attention that you want to give them. Um, in some regard, that’s what happened to me. So, um, but I want to let you know that I’m still here. Uh, I’m in good shape. There’s no major health issues, there’s none of that kind of stuff. I’m still around. The family’s good, you know, we’re okay there. The truck still runs, it does good. I still have plans for it. I still want to make, uh, all those things happen to it. I still want to bring you along on the journey if I can. Um, it’s just a matter of time, not having enough time to do, uh, the video editing and the output that I would like to do for YouTube. I really enjoy doing it. Uh, I just haven’t had the time to do that. Um, I also have some ideas for a, um, second channel where I’ll do some around the house type stuff. There’s a couple of videos on this channel, um, about around the house stuff like my garage floor, my workbench, uh, just the garage organization, I guess they kind of belong on Bullnose Garage because it’s about a garage. But there’s a lot of other things that I do, um, that don’t have anything to do with Bullnose. No, they don’t have anything to do with the garage, uh, but they are interesting enough, uh, that I want to put them on YouTube because I don’t see other videos about the kind of stuff that I’m doing. Um, so I think things like, you know, I’m working on, like we just bought an RV and there’s some stuff I’m doing to it, and there’s no videos on that. I had to go out and do my own research, figure out how to do some stuff to it, and I think that’d be helpful for some people. So I’m going to do some videos on that kind of stuff, uh, around the house kind of stuff, you know, little things, but that won’t go on the Bullnose channel because the Bullnose channel is about the Bullnose and you guys probably don’t care about that crap, so I’m not going to put that here. Uh, but I will make another channel about that and I’ll do an introduction and a thing about that channel, everything. But basically this is just to let you know that I’m still kicking. Um, I didn’t jump off the face of the Earth, I’m not six feet under. Uh, you know, things are basically okay. It’s just a matter of not having the kind of time. I’m a regular schmo who works a nine to five, and you know, I got a family to feed. And, uh, there’s, you know, when you only have so many hours in the week, uh, the things that fall off are the stuff that don’t contribute to the household. And even though this channel and doing things on the truck contributes to my own personal joy, um, that’s what has to be sacrificed because I don’t have time for that. And that’s not to say I’m not getting joy from my kids and everything else because I am. They’re adorable. But, yeah, unfortunately, and unfortunately for you guys, I just don’t have time to devote to that like I used to. Um, but again, I do want to keep doing it. So until I get so old and gray that I can’t work on that stuff anymore, um, I do plan to continue the channel, continue working on that. So, uh, yeah, that’s it. That’s basically the update. Um, unfortunately, don’t expect anything soon. I don’t expect any kind of regular updates. I will get things out as soon as I can. Like I said, I’ve already got all the videos already in the can for, uh, doing a fuel pump change on the truck. Um, I’ve also got another video that’s in the can for, uh, doing headlight restoration. So, uh, those will be coming at some point. Um, and then as I continue to do work on it when I have time, I will video that and try to get that out to you guys. So, um, you know, again, I appreciate all the comments about, you know, asking me what’s going on and where I’m at and, and, uh, you know, that kind of stuff. And I’m here and I’m okay. Just, uh, yeah, life gets in the way sometimes. So that’s it. So thanks again for watching. We’ll see you next time.