Note: For those who are seeing this as the first Wipe New article, I would recommend reading the Wipe New Trim Kit article first to get an idea of this product.
In this article, the focus will be on the Wipe New Headlight Restore kit.
Wipe New Headlight Restore is a kit designed specifically for restoring dull or faded headlights to a like-new condition through a very easy process. The product used is (at least to my knowledge) the same as the liquid in the general Wipe New Trim Restore Kit, but it comes with a few more tools to aid the process.
Included are a couple microfiber towels, a sanding block with 2 sides, a small towel pre-soaked with the WipeNew liquid inside a sealed package, a pair of rubber gloves and the instructions. This kit is what I was really looking forward to trying out and seeing if it really does work. As soon as I saw the sanding block in the kit, I immediately thought of the false advertising they did, especially with the generic Wipe New Kit. They say wipe on, wipe off and you get a brand new headlight. Well, I was going to find out.
The instructions actually say to use the sanding block if the headlights have a lot of yellow residue and are badly faded, but normally worn headlights can be treated without any sanding. The instructions say to test the headlight by making it wet… if you can see clearly through the lens when it’s wet, sanding isn’t a must. Only if it’s really bad, yellow and faded. I tried it both ways.
Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending how you look at it), one of the headlights on my Toyota Matrix is a bit worn. As you can see in the photo below, we actually did some polishing last year just to be able to show a before/after of our headlight restoration services. It has held up pretty well considering no sealant or protection was applied after the polishing.
I decided to tape the headlight so that some of the faded section remains after the Wipe New application for comparison…
I then sanded the area with both sides of their sanding block (one is a bit more abrasive than the other)…
The sanding process definitely improved some of the haze previously seen on the headlight…
After thoroughly drying, I applied the product to the section I just sanded…
I was fairly liberal with it, but didn’t need to be. The product quickly made the lens look clearer…
For testing purposes, I removed some of the tape and wanted to see just how easily this product works without any prep work. I simply applied some Wipe New to the middle section of the headlight, which was only washed with soap…
After removing the tape, I was left with this monstrosity of a headlight 🙂 …
As you can easily tell, Wipe New definitely improved the look of the faded lens without any sanding, as they initially promised. I believe this will be perfect for testing purposes because I will be able to see how it looks after a while on the sanded part as well as the section with no prep at all.
Since the towel with the Wipe New liquid was extremely saturated and could probably be used on at least 3-4 pairs of headlights, I decided to do a very random test. I used it directly on top of my fairly dirty tail light lens. There was a lot of winter crud and dirt from daily driving, which I first cleaned off with one side of the Wipe New towel, then used a clean side to go over half the tail light to apply it evenly. I did this simply to see how the product can be used and how long it will last when applied in a very bad manner.
It definitely changed the look of the lens and made it look much better in terms of clarity and swirl marks on the surface.
So Does it Work?
As with the other Wipe New kit, I do believe this works for the most part as advertised. It’s a very strong chemical that bonds to the surface and due to it’s thickness and application fills quite a bit of haze and swirl marks. The one part that’s not true from their advertising is that it makes the lens like new and crystal clear. It definitely improves it, but you can easily see some of the deeper and some not so deep swirl marks.
I have plans of thoroughly sanding and polishing a different headlight and applying Wipe New to it as protection, just to see how well it works and how long it lasts. Not sure how good that will look compared to actual coatings on the market today, such as CarPro DLUX, but it’s worth a test in my opinion.
At the end of the day, as with the other Wipe New kit, I have to say Wipe New really does work. I have yet to see how long it lasts, but if you have faded headlights and simply want to improve the looks and visibility, while leaving good protection, I’d have to say it does the job it sets out to do. I will surely report back in a few weeks or months once I see how it behaves and looks in terms of durability. As of today, it has been on for about 1 week with no signs of failure, so at the very least it works to “pass inspections” as they repeatedly advertise 🙂 .
Thanks again for reading and stay tuned for further experiments like this one.