Advice on Used Litronics

[particlewave]

You may have heard good things about this, or had good luck with that, but nothing will be as good as real automotive clear coat sprayed on by a pro. Period.

[Oldcarguy]

Originally Posted by particlewave

You may have heard good things about this, or had good luck with that, but nothing will be as good as real automotive clear coat sprayed on by a pro. Period.

Maybe so, but the SprayMax 1k primer/2k catalyst clearcoat solution is light years beyond what you can typically buy off the shelf in a store. I’m a year in with my refinished 986 headlights and they still look like new.

[itsnotanova]

Originally Posted by Oldcarguy

Maybe so, but the SprayMax 1k primer/2k catalyst clearcoat solution is light years beyond what you can typically buy off the shelf in a store. I’m a year in with my refinished 986 headlights and they still look like new.

Sorry I missed that part. I glazed over the conversation and thought you guys were talking about any typical clear coat spray can you'd find at your local hardware store. Eastwood sells that type of clear coat with hardner you activate into it. I've never used it so I can't comment on how well it performs. It sounds like a good product if you don't have painting equipment. It use to be $50 a can though.

[Oldcarguy]

Originally Posted by itsnotanova

Sorry I missed that part. I glazed over the conversation and thought you guys were talking about any typical clear coat spray can you'd find at your local hardware store. Eastwood sells that type of clear coat with hardner you activate into it. I've never used it so I can't comment on how well it performs. It sounds like a good product if you don't have painting equipment. It use to be $50 a can though.

No worries, I do agree with you and PW that the best way to go is to have a pro do the clear coat. For me, the downsides of the SpayMax (and other 2 part catalyst in a can solutions) are:

- expensive
- dangerous to use without proper respirator equipment
- practically impossible to properly control environmental and clean conditions without a paint booth (true for all home painting projects)

So, I use this type of product for small projects like headlight lenses, bumperettes and small bike projects but not for anything else. When my side skirts come in, they’re off to the body shop along with my FVD turbo style side intakes.

[itsnotanova]

Originally Posted by particlewave

You may have heard good things about this, or had good luck with that, but nothing will be as good as real automotive clear coat sprayed on by a pro. Period.

X2. I sprayed my headlights with a clear automotive paint when I was painting some other parts and they still look like brand new two years later. The front of my car gets a daily dose of Texas sun every day too. The spray can stuff doesn't have a hardner in it and they''ll go dull after some time. Not as quick as polishing, but eventually.

[Oldcarguy]

Originally Posted by itsnotanova

X2. I sprayed my headlights with a clear automotive paint when I was painting some other parts and they still look like brand new two years later. The front of my car gets a daily dose of Texas sun every day too. The spray can stuff doesn't have a hardner in it and they''ll go dull after some time. Not as quick as polishing, but eventually.

Ok, one more time - the SprayMax Headlight System clear coat is a two stage catalyst paint (2k), it does have a separate hardener that is released into the paint at application time by puncturing the hardener container that is within the clear coat can. It has a pot life of a hour or so.. Additionally, the SprayMax system requires use of two different products, a 1k primer paint and the 2k catalyst paint. They are bundled together by shrink wrap and cannot be purchased separately.

The SprayMax system cannot be purchased just anywhere. I found mine at an auto paint shop through one of the online stores like EBay or Walmart Online.

I don’t care one way or the other if anyone uses this system, I just want people who come here looking for information to have all the info possible. There are details of using this product in the link I posted earlier in this thread.

[particlewave]

Originally Posted by Oldcarguy

Ok, one more time - the SprayMax Headlight System clear coat is a two stage catalyst paint (2k), it does have a separate hardener that is released into the paint at application time by puncturing the hardener container that is within the clear coat can. It has a pot life of a hour or so.. Additionally, the SprayMax system requires use of two different products, a 1k primer paint and the 2k catalyst paint. They are bundled together by shrink wrap and cannot be purchased separately.

The SprayMax system cannot be purchased just anywhere. I found mine at an auto paint shop through one of the online stores like EBay or Walmart Online.

I don’t care one way or the other if anyone uses this system, I just want people who come here looking for information to have all the info possible. There are details of using this product in the link I posted earlier in this thread.

Write back in 5 years and let us know if it holds up.
You still have to worry about finish quality (runs, orange peel and dust/hair contaminants).

Better to just pay a pro $50 to spray them when they're doing a car or something.
Spraymax runs $30-$40 by itself and you still have to worry about contaminants and finish quality.
Automotive clear coat is proven and will look like glass for years.

Having worked with hundreds of headlights over the years, I have to say that a pro is the best route if you can get it done for less than $100.
It's just not worth the headache.

[Frodo]

Originally Posted by particlewave

You may have heard good things about this, or had good luck with that, but nothing will be as good as real automotive clear coat sprayed on by a pro. Period.

Yeah, we can probably agree on that. Some of us are just looking for the best of the almost-as-good-as-professional approach. I read in some post somewhere (I can't seem to find it anymore) the idea about prepping the headlight, then taking it into a body shop and having them do a quick spray at the end of spraying another vehicle. That actually seemed like a pretty good idea, and one that probably wouldn't be that costly.

My question, though, is the prepping. The whole reason I'm messing with this at all is that I replaced the passenger side headlamp last September following a fender-bender (a monumentally stupid moment on my part--I THOUGHT the guy in front of me at a busy intersection had committed to go...he hadn't) in which the light was damaged. Now the passenger-side lamp is brand new (no scratches, no yellowing) and the driver side one (which had looked pretty decent to me previously) now looks horrible. Relatively speaking. I don't think there's any way I'm going to get the one looking anything like the other at this point. Even if you sand the hell out of them, do you ever really get all that yellowing out? (The older one has virtually no scratches or cloudiness--it's just yellowed with time.) I think this is all the more true in that I think some of the yellowing is of components on the inside and, despite all your helpful instructions and video, Charles, I'm not sure I want to tackle opening this thing up for purely cosmetic reasons.

Woody, I had pressed the body shop guy to let me obtain a gently-used headlamp from you (remember us talking? I was afraid that with the cost of these lights they were gonna end up totalling the car?) He was not flexible on the issue. I hadn't really thought about this angle: not only could I get a second-hand light cheaper from you, but the car actually would have cosmetically tooked better with two headlamps that had seen a few years in the sun instead of having an old one side-by-side with a new.

Originally Posted by itsnotanova

X2. The spray can stuff doesn't have a hardner in it and they''ll go dull after some time.

I'm not sure that's true. Correct me if I'm wrong, OCG, but isn't that what that circular red thing is for, the one on the top of the 2k clearcoat? You pull it off, affix it onto the little rod at the bottom of the can, and whack it, to open up a smaller canister inside, releasing a hardener?


Anyway, my question remains as before. My "bad" light is about as yellowed as your passenger-side one, Kevin. Even with aggressive sanding, I don't think it's realistic to think it'll ever look even close to the driver-side one. Maybe I should pick up a used one and sell the hardly-used new one for good money