So....with a little trial and error on my part, I bring you my multi-step process to de-yellowing your headlights. Your lights will not be restored to showroom condition, but hopefully they WILL turn out a little nicer than when you started.
Items to gather: A couple of cloths/towels, nail polish remover, metal polish (I used Eagle One), glass cleaner (big fan of ArmorAll cleaner myself), paint cleaner wax (Meguiars!), regular wax (Meguiars!), RainX.
Step One: Give the headlights a good washing before you start. In fact, you may as well just wash your whole damn car...not like it's going to hurt it to be clean.
Step Two: Grab your nail polish remover. I bought the pads that are pre-soaked in npr so I didn't have to fuss with cotton balls. Grab a pad (or ball) of npr and begin wiping your headlights. You'll notice it immediately reveals a cleaner layer. Continue wiping. Take a look at your pad, you'll probably see - yellow! Continue wiping until you feel as though you've sufficiently wiped.
This is the part that will probably make you want to start screaming and crying. Try to avoid letting your emotions get out of control, because we'll take off that nasty, yucky, sticky, peely-looking haze that you're just sure ruined your headlights with step number three.
Step Three: Take your metal polish and a small rag. Apply a generous amount of the polish to your rag. Begin applying to your headlight. Feel free to rub briskly, but do be aware that there are abrasives in the polish that will scratch the soft plastic of your headlight. I did end up rubbing briskly and nothing terribly bad happened. Use your own discretion.
Step Four: Immediately begin buffing polish off with clean rag. Rub all that stuff off. Isn't it pretty underneath that nail-polish induced haze?
Step Five: Grab your bottle of paint cleaner wax. This stuff is designed to help remove minor scratches, swirl marks, and all that other icky stuff we hate to see in our paint, and is now on your headlights (yes, you'll notice you have created some light scratching. this tends to happen when one uses cleaners/abrasives on plastics). Take a generous amount of the cleaner and rub it into your headlight real good. Put some elbow grease into it.
Allow to dry to haze, and buff off with clean cloth. Run your fingers over the smooth surface of your headlamp. Feel free to say "oooh..."
Step Six: Now, take your regular wax and apply a coat of this. It helps further smooth out the surface and adds protection since you did just take off a couple layers. Allow to dry to haze, and buff off with clean cloth.
Looking better with each step, isn't it?
Step Seven: Now here's a tip you probably haven't heard before. Take some RainX and apply that. In addition to making rain run right off the surface, rainx fills in tiny little pores in plastic/glass which makes it even smoother. Go ahead and put 'er on. Let dry to a haze, and buff off. Some people like to remove their RainX with water, if this gets your rocks off, feel free to do so. I've always just removed with a dry cloth and have never had any problems.
Step Eight: Take that glass cleaner and squirt a bit onto the headlight. This is just going to help take off any excess whatever might be left on the light, and will give you a good opportunity to admire the fine work of the RainX you just applied.
Now, you're done! Don't your lights look better?
I told you we wouldn't have a showroom crystal-clear light, but it sure beats the pants off that yellow crap you'd been driving around with. Yay! :ylsuper
