Diesel RVs: Re: [diesel_mercedes] my 2 cents on headlights. toothpaste

I've used toothpaste on my windshields with great sucess, and my infared door locks.

Tennessee Nate

From: "audiolaw@aol.com" <audiolaw@aol.com>
To: diesel_mercedes@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, March 9, 2013 10:15 PM
Subject: Re: [diesel_mercedes] my 2 cents on headlights. toothpaste

It's VERY important to remember that toothpaste is abrasive, and 'whitening' toothpaste is more abrasive than average toothpaste. The result of polishing headlights with toothpaste should be the same as polishing any metal or glass with abrasives.

Even fine abrasives leave groove patterns in what is polished. The finer the polish, the finer the grooves. And whether you polish in a straight line or swirl or circles, etc. will also affect the grooves that are left.

Look at a CD or DVD. The groove in one of those (one groove, from edge to center) is too fine to be visible to the naked eye. But tilt the disc in the light and you will see rainbow patterns reflected, as the light refracts off the groove.

I expect that you can achieve good results with a fine abrasive. I don't know that toothpaste is fine enough. But now that they're clean, get an LED minimag lite and shine it through from the bulb socket. Move it around and see how the light comes through the lens, and whether it is getting refracted or the lens focus is affected.

You might want to get some very fine silver or other polish to follow the toothpaste.

ALSO, notice that the refracting grooves also happen whenever anyone uses emery paper or a fine file on electrical connections. It doesn't take much to cut through any coating on the connection and expose the base metal, thereby decreasing the electrical conductivity AND opening the door to corrosion starting.

That's why electronic engineers always say NEVER 'clean' any electrical connection with anything harsher than a pencil eraser.

Tom

In a message dated 3/9/2013 9:52:51 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, jcrcpa@tx.rr.com writes:

Last week I cleaned the headlights on my cars based on a utube video.
colgate whitening toothpaste. rub on rub off. made them clear as ... well it made them clear. I will report back after a few weeks.

Chuck
84 300sd

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