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Sandblasted Fog Lamp Lens Refurbishment



For the record:

In an experiment run last weekend, I was able to re-polish the lenses of my
wife's car's highly sandblasted foglamps to a point were their operation
should be close to new.  The process was to use an orbital sander (I used a
Makita carpentry unit, but pneumatic orbital would also do) with
successively finer grades of silicon carbide sandpaper to remove the surface
pits.  The sanding was done wet, and there was no attempt to get out the
deeper pits, as that would have required too much time to be cost-effective.
(A new lens can be had for about $60.)  I used two paper patches of each
grit (120, 220, 380, 500, 600) and sanded with each until there was little
ground glass paste evident at the edge of the pad.  At the end of this
process, the lens was much smoother and clearer, but hazy.  Next, the lens
was subjected to buffing using Ditzler DRX-16 power buffing compound and a
power buffer.  This made the lens surface very smooth and clear.  There are
still many pits, but far from the initial 100% surface pitting that
scattered light in all directions.  Excluding actions that would be required
to install a new lens, this process required less than 1 hour per lens.

                .... Kirby   (Kirby A. Smith)
                              2 x 1988 90q
                          New Hampshire USA