While waiting for fasteners to be re-plated, I find myself looking for little projects to complete. I went about restoring the front turn signal assemblies yesterday and today. These front lenses get a lot of abuse... essentially, they get sand blasted over time. These are likely original to the car. They look ok at 10 feet, but get up close and you can see they are quite dull. And, they have taken some impacts from rocks and road debris. The close ups were taken at 5X magnification.
I used several grits of sandpaper and performed a wet sanding process. I started with 320 grit, then moved on to 600, 1000, 1500, 2000 and 2500. For the first two grits, I left tape in place to protect the lettering. After wet sanding, I buff with Meguiar's compounds and foam buffing pads. #83 first, then #7 "Show Glaze", using different buffing pads to keep from mixing. While I didn't achieve perfection, the results are pretty good.
Next up will be the rear tail light lenses. They will be easy in comparison because they don't take the sandblasting impacts like the front lenses.