Headlight restoration in Oceanside

Most headlights can be saved. Some can't, and we'll tell you which from the photo before you spend a dollar.

• Yellow, chalky or hazy on the outside? That's sun damage on the surface of the lens. It restores well, and it's most cars on the road.
• Fog or water drops on the inside? Polishing the outside won't touch that. The housing is cracked or the seal failed, and the unit needs replacing.
• Cracks, deep chips or broken tabs? That's a replacement too.

Not sure which you've got? Send a photo. If the honest answer is "you don't need us," that's the answer you'll get. We'd rather lose the job than sell you something that won't work.

A headlight is plastic with a thin UV coating sprayed on at the factory. Sun breaks that coating down, and a car that lives outside near the coast gets more sun than the same car in a garage inland. Once the coating fails, the plastic underneath yellows and pits, and that rough surface scatters your light instead of throwing it down the road. A badly yellowed lens can put out a fraction of the light a clear one does. That's the part that matters on a dark road or in the marine layer.

If you've cleaned your headlights before and watched them go yellow again in a month, this is why. Toothpaste, bug spray and the $15 sandpaper kits knock the haze off for a week or two, but they strip the lens without sealing it. The bare plastic is now less protected than it was, so it yellows faster. The kits are not lying to you. They just stop one step early.

We come to you in Oceanside and do the job in your driveway. It's not a wipe-down. The failed layer comes off and the lens gets sealed again.

1. We tape off the paint and trim around each lens so only the headlight gets worked.
2. We sand the yellowed layer back through finer and finer grits. It's removed, not polished over.
3. We refine the lens until the haze and fine scratches are gone and it reads clear.
4. We seal it with a UV clear coat and let it cure. That's the step that makes it hold instead of fading in a few weeks.

It's $55 per vehicle. The final price depends on how far gone the lenses are and the size of the car, so we confirm it from your photos first. Nothing changes once we're at the car. Pair it with a full detail and you're at $240, which is $25 less than booking them apart and the biggest visible difference you can make in one visit.

Every price

How long it holds comes down to the seal and where the car sleeps. A garage-kept car holds clear longer. A car parked in the Oceanside sun every day comes due sooner. The clear coat is warrantied for a year and a half.

If you typed headlight restoration near me from Oceanside, that's us. We come to you. Nearby in North County? Ask. The radius depends on the job, and we'll tell you straight if we can't reach you. See everything 760 On Demand does for headlights and detailing in Oceanside.