Polishing the new Focus' headlight's and removing the paint from the wheels

The headlights on my new Ford Focus were scratched and yellow so I planned on restoring then with the Cerakote ceramic kit I have seen good reviews for, or replacing them.

However, I found a bottle of headlight polish in my garage that I must have bought twenty years ago that I had previously tried and not had good results with. But as I had it I gave it a go.

Here is what the headlights looked like before:



Amazingly I started seeing instant results. Here is what it looked like part way through:



And here is it what it looked like at the end:



So I was really happy with the results, although I doubt it will last long as it is a polish only, and doesn't have a clear coat or anything to protect it long term. Not sure it's worth mentioning the brand as it probably isn't available any more.

Next job was to continue on with the removal of paint from the wheels. I wanted to take the wheels off to make this process easier but the wheel nuts were so tight I could not remove them by hand, and even with a long extension all I did was bend a tool. Fortunately my neighbour came to the rescue with a Dewalt impact driver which made short work of all but one, but needed the maximum setting before it could move them. The last stubborn one eventually came off too.

I had already spent a couple of hours with acetone and removed the paint only from a small part of the wheel. Now restocked with another litre of acetone, and with the wheel removed so I could work outdoors where I would hopefully breath in less of the acetone, I spent another hour or two and did all of the spokes.

I still have the inner and outer part of the wheel to do, which will probably take just as long as it is harder to access. Hopefully I can also save the badge too.

The paint is quite easy to remove on the inside of the spokes, presumably as there is not as much paint coverage there, but is difficult on the front facing parts.

I also made a discovery that mineral turpentine is great for cleaning up all the residue left behind after using acetone. That saves a lot of effort. It is also capable of removing the paint too, but works much slower than acetone. I plan to try soaking part of the wheel with mineral turpentine to see if that is more viable than using the more expensive and toxic acetone.