Ordered some new headlights and plan to install this weekend.

Motivation: one side is very cloudy and the other is trying to catch up. WD-40 clears it up for a few months and the clouds return. Reading about turtle kit seemed to net mixed results and these lights were not too bad on price, plus I like the OEM look in a black trim. Also they require less elbow grease...

I stayed halogen so they can keep melting the snow when I need to do storm response in a Michigan winter, glow worms won't cut it for me but I did get new bulbs while I'm at it.

Any reason to keep my old ones? I can't think of any value in them.

 

Keep them. Clean them up and paint them like I did mine. Then either use them yourself or sell them.

 

Keep 'em. I kept an old pair, why, I'm not sure...

 

use them as a retrofit and build some HID projectors. or just keep them as an emergency pair.

 

I kept mine for HID lighting. Never did it because it would have been a hack job. Now that I have a 3D printer, I can do a professional implementation at a reasonable price.

 

The original coating is very hard and scratch resistant but once it's sun damaged it's junk and has to be polished off. Then your headlights need to be polished over and over and over to maintain them. Basically unless they have the original coating on them I would file them in the circular bin.

A detail shop tried to polish my daughters original finish off when a friend gifted her the detail service because a little corner of the finish was sun damaged. I made sure they understood how angry I'd be if they did that. The little **** at the detail shop tried to argue with me but I made my point well enough and he dropped it.

 

What they wanted to do is certainly not the correct way to do it. If you really want to save them, you sand off all the oxidized and yellowed finish then proceed with finer and finer grits. You then clear coat with a high quality UV resistant paint. Not the rattle can stuff either. Iv'e done it on a couple vehicles and they looked great and lasted a long time.