All the plastic light lenses on my bus have gone white/milky (mainly the clear indicators and reversing section on he rear lights). Any ideas if soaking them in bleach for a few days will damage them? Anything else I can try?
I'd think it's UV light that's affected the plastic, rather than something on the surface. Might not be possible to get them clear again .
more likely its happened due to what has been put on them in the past, a solvent maybe? Dont think you will get rid of it if its through the plastic, and not just on the surface - t-cut might get rid of it if its surface only
I think as snotty says its UV light. Suppose thats what i get for buying cheap tat. Looking at them again it does appear to be the plastic thats changed colour. A bit like any white plastic kettle or toaster goes yellow over the years.
I use maguires scratch x on mine, it's like T-cut but milder , takes them up nice and shiny, but as mentioned before if its through the plastic it probablly won't shift.
On discovery chip foose sanded the raised manufacturers righting off some red rear lenses then wet sanded it like new paint work with 1800 or 2000 grit paper then polished them and they looked good, only works on the surface obviously
this woman i work for had the same ,she took them to the dealer and they got them better ,6 month later it failed the mot and she bought new ,now 8 months on they are going cloudy again....T cut will not help ,bad design... C
Cutting compound and buffing will only remove tiny surface scratches and improve shine. It will not restore the rich original color or clarity. There are probably millions of deep cracks, if you look closely. If you clean the lenses well with alcohol, blast out the wax and dirt with a power washer, let dry, then slop on enough Armor All or other tyre gloss to soak into the cracks, (inside and out) it will help considerably. But honestly, new lenses are fairly inexpensive and really make a big difference. I bought mine at busdepot.com. The rear lenses are $25 (15bp) each, the front lenses are only $10 (6bp) each. Buy them one at a time once in a while if you have to. It's worth it. P.S. as a last resort before breaking down and buying new lenses, I have wondered if Super Glue would work better than tyre gloss. A heavy application should dry slowly enough to spread it on, just not sure what to spread it with. Maybe a rubber spatula? Just a thought.
The fumes off superglue makes clear plastic go cloudy and also shows up latent fingerprints rather well (i watch loads of CSI ). Think i'll just chuck the yellow indicator lenses back on for now.
Well, as it turned out, my spare lens was not cloudy anyway. I only replaced it because it was chipped. But my front lenses, though not cloudy either, do have that crackled appearance I mentioned before, so I tried the Super Glue on that. I spread it on with a little rubber spatula and let it dry. The glue dried cloudier than I expected, so I wiped it off with non-acetone nail lacquer remover. The glue, as I expected, did fill in the cracks, but only a bit more than half of them. And I'm still not sure how it would work on cloudy lenses, so that was a waste of time.
I've given them a bit of a wash with soapy water and they cleaned up a little. I think a lot of the cloudyness has gone now as it was mould due to water getting past the perrished seals.
