Every now and again a product comes along that promises to save money, work, and offers incredible results – and I give it a go 🙂
As anyone who knows me, knows I run my Jaguars on almost no budget at all – so I tend to take the harder manual route of workarounds, or do it yourself fixes whenever I can, and my S-Type headlamps have been one of those ongoing projects over the years.. I often wish I had the glass lenses from my old X308’s as they did not suffer the ongoing issues I have had with fogged headlights on my S-Type.
The past few years I have used T-Cut, gentle emery paper, lots of elbow grease and even my electric drill to try to gain a few months of clear headlamps. This year I saw a product that was at a great price offering clear headlamps in 4 hours with no elbow grease, emery paper or drills needed.. I was very wary as after all most things that claim the seemingly impossible are just that – impossible, but thought I would give it a go, and if it works for me, it would work for you.. I am known for if it can go wrong it will.. and breaking something else whilst fixing any one thing on the car – so anything that survives me, can survive anyone – trust me 🙂
I bought 2 packs of the Optima Headlight Restoration Kit – as it states one pack for two headlamps. Total cost from EuroCarParts was around £30 for the two kits.
This is what I got:
I opened envelope number 1 – the cleaner cloth, and used it to clean all four headlamps.. Of course the S-Type headlamps are not that large. Here I made my first mistake and found out what is in the cleaner cloths.. The cloths seem to contain a very weak version of T-Cut, and if you do not wipe the headlamps dry immediately (and it is a sunny day) the cleaning fluid sets solid, and looks just like T-Cut. So when you use the cleaner cloth make sure you have a dry cloth, or kitchen roll immediately to hand to wipe the cleaning fluid off as soon as you have cleaned a headlight – do it before you get to the next headlight!
Here is how my headlamps were before cleaning:
And here is how they were when I didn’t clean the cleaning fluid off quickly enough 🙂
Now you get to open envelope number two 🙂 I didn’t, but I would recommend you use gloves at this point.. take the cloth out – do not unfold it, just quickly and efficently wipe the fluid across all the headlamps in quick sucession, making sure that you have an even coating over all your headlamps.
You then get this result:
I now have a spare kit for as and when this kit wears off (for lack of a better phrase) and well, the results speak for theirselves.
I recommend this kit for anyone who is on a limited budget, like me, and has fought with hazy lights for a while. The kit actually does exactly what it says on the box and comes highly recommended by us.
Finally a couple of notes – only do this in warm and dry weather, and allow 4 hours for the new top coat to dry fully before any moisture such as rain or dew gets near it.
As for longetivity – I will be on the case and monitoring how it does, but already I am very impressed with what this kit can do.
Reviewer Steve Sheldon 2020