2Gb foglight lens repair

From Dsmwiki

So your DSM is aging gracefully, but the road has been harsh on those foglights of yours. It's time to do something about it. The following procedure will show you how to remove the pitting and scratching the "sands of time" have rendered upon your foglight lenses. While not a guide to a total rebuild, let's assume you know how to remove and disassemble your fogs. If you're now working on appearance it's because you did your timing belt and you are going faster!

This procedure does involve some elbow grease. You will be sanding. It could take you a couple of hours per lens to get it right, and you have to be careful that you don't drop the lens! It shatters- trust me!

Total cost for this operation will be a few dollars in sandpaper. You may also elect to purchase some OEM parts for a couple dollars.

• What you will need
  1. Dust mask
     • Silica is a carcinogen. Inhaling glass dust is a good way to get cancer. Don't say I didn't warn you.
  2. Sandpaper (1 sheet of each grit, per lens)
     • 80 Grit
     • 100 Grit
     • 150 Grit
     • 200 Grit
     • 400 Grit
     • 800 Grit
     • 1000 Grit
     • 1200 Grit
     • 1500 Grit
     • 2000 Grit
  3. Thin Foam Sanding Pad (Home Depot, Paint Section)
     • This could be any thin, soft, giving surface. It is used to lay the sandpaper on, but can be useful for sanding other things
  4. Firm sanding surface
     • I used a blue Staedtler self healing cutting mat- it has a little give, but is firm and a good surface to do rough sanding on
  5. Channel Locks or Pliers
     • For removing the screws that retain the black lens cover holder thing
  6. Mitsubishi Part Number MU810520 (little white push-in grommets that foglight mounts in)
     • There are two per foglight, and they are always broken

Let's Begin. Your foglight might look like this:

Here is the lens removed, before polishing:

You will start with 80 grit sandpaper. You have the option of laying the whole sheet down on a table surface and rubbing the lens surface against it, or you may put a small piece on a sanding bolck as you see in the picture below. I recommend the block at first because the lens can slip out fo your hand and fall to the floor. As you sand away you will hear a lot of rough scraping that might make you cringe, and immediately you will start to see white powder. This is glass dust. Wear a dust mask!

The lens will start to become very cloudy. You want to get good coverage of the whole thing, so any place that isn't cloudy, make it so with more sanding. You will also see small white spots where the pits in the glass are filling with dust. Essentially you will continue sanding with the 80 Grit paper until you can't see these little pits anymore. It's no secret, this will take a long time. The best you can do is to make sure that you sand evenly using a hard surface, and check the sandpaper for courseness. Don't be afraid to use a new piece. New sandpaper will cut more aggressively and save some time.

Once you think you have all the pits out, you should switch to a soft backing surface for your 80 Grit paper. This will help make sure the surface of the lens doesn't have any flat spots. Here you are just rubbing the lens on the paper, not the other way around.

The lens should now be completely opaque with no white pits, and have a uniform appearance as below:

It is time to graduate to 100 Grit sandpaper! You must not skip the 100 grit and go straight to 150 grit! 150 will not remove the 80 grit scratches. This is an important rule of sandpaper. I wasted a lot of time using the 150 until I discovered some scrap pieces of 100, and it INSTANTLY made the difference.