The headlights on my 1999 Mitsubishi 3000GT have been turning foggy over time. It's the outer part of the plastic headlight covers where the problem is. I thought it was some weird coating, I tried scratching it off but it doesn't help; it's like the plastic itself is crystallizing or something. I've just been living with it for years now, with poor illumination on the road at night-time... until today.

I saw an article on digg about some guy who figured out how to remove scratches from the plastic cover on his Ipod, by polishing it with Brasso. Other people leaving comments below the article swore it worked.

My cell phone is 1.5 years old, and had lots of scratches, so I went to the grocery store to buy some of this stuff. The place I go to does not have Brasso, specifically, but they did have a generic looking brass polish, so I bought it. It took a lot of rubbing this smelly liquid on my cell phone screen with a cloth, but it made my cell phone screen look almost brand-new!

Then this weekend it occurred to me - why not try that stuff on my car lenses? They're clear plastic, just like the cell phone screen. So I tried it. And it WORKED. I rinsed off the goop after rubbing for about 10 minutes on each side of the car, then let it dry. Check out these pics.

Yes, I know my car needs a wash really badly. It rained the other day, just a little bit, which always deposits dirt like mad.

I think my headlights will work a lot better now. There's no reason to spend hundreds of dollars replacing the lenses (especially since I couldn't find any on the Internet for this car), when you can simply spend less than $7 on a bottle of this stuff, and about 20 minutes of work.

I can't wait to try driving with my lights on after the sun goes down.

technorati tags: 3000gt, headlights, foggy, cloudy, car, lenses, polish