Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Mothers PowerBall 4Lights Kit: A Review


The headlights lenses on my wife's car (2003 Toyota Camry) were looking pretty dull and gray.  It makes sense that clear headlights are better for safety and visibility, and clear headlights look better than dull headlights as well.  My mechanic offers a headlight restoration service, and I knew I could buy new lenses for about $50 each. I've seen headlight restoration kits for sale, but I would wonder "do they really work?" and not want to risk the twenty bucks or so to find out. I read a review of restoration kits on Consumer Reports, and it seemed that for the most part these kits will work well enough, in other words, they will to some extent make an improvement to headlight lenses.

I decided to go ahead and try out the Mothers' Powerball 4Lights Headlight Restoration Kit, which I bought for a little over $20 at our local Walmart.  Here's what I found.

The bottom line: take a look at the before and after pictures. I'm pretty happy with the outcome.

Before 4Lights
The kit I bought included liquid polish, a polishing cloth, the buffer bit for your power drill, and for use in extreme cases, sanding pads. Even though I thought my lenses were in fairly bad shape, I wound up not having to use the sanding pads.

I started by opening the hood of the car, so that polish wouldn't get splattered all over the hood of the car, and I taped off the area around the lenses. It was cool outside that day, so I happened to be wearing a jacket. You definitely want to use safety glasses too, because the polish will get splattered all over the place, especially as you first get the hang of running the drill.

After 4Lights
I basically followed the instructions: clean the lens, install the buffer bit on your drill, put a blob of polish on the it, and get to work. Try to keep the bit speed down to minimize splatter, and just go back and forth with the polisher over the lens, and add a little more polish every now and again. It took me about 20-30 minutes per lens. Let dry for a few minutes, and then polish them with the supplied cloth.

I like that everything I needed was included (except the drill, of course). I like that there is enough polish that I could do a second vehicle if I needed.

I'm happy with the Powerball 4Lights Restoration Kit. I think you will be to.