Fog light restoration

[Jikky]

Hi ,I had badly clouded fog lights and had nothing to loose by having a go at cleaning the inside lenses, using a strong limescale remover and a microfibre cloth,I sprayed the limescale remover into the rear lamp hole and left it for 5 mins,then threaded a a damp microfibre and gave it a good rub against the lens,I did this twice then washed them out with distilled water and they have come up as clean as new,so I hope this helps if anybody wants to save some money!

https://rb.gy/vpk6c

 

I forgot to take a before pic,but if you have cloudy fogs you will know!!!

[glimp]

Ha! I thought they were supposed to be white! I've recently had the front bumper off, removed the foglights and cleaned the outsides  - and I could have done the insides too, if I'd have known.

Damned if I'm going to do it now!

Well done to you!

[PCM]

On 10/2/2023 at 10:07 PM, glimp said:

Ha! I thought they were supposed to be white!

So did I!

But having looked at pictures of 'new' IQs, it does look like they should be clear...

[glimp]

Just ordered a pair of 6000k white LED bulbs for the fogs, so they'll be looking white anyway! They aren't canbus-friendly bulbs, so I hope they don't throw up an error somewhere. Do these cars deliver canbus error messages on the dash display? I've searched the forum but can't find any mention of it. ...and I've shoved a load of LED bulbs elsewhere, without any issues (headlamps, sidelights & reversing lamp).

[Jikky]

8 hours ago, glimp said:

Just ordered a pair of 6000k white LED bulbs for the fogs, so they'll be looking white anyway! They aren't canbus-friendly bulbs, so I hope they don't throw up an error somewhere. Do these cars deliver canbus error messages on the dash display? I've searched the forum but can't find any mention of it. ...and I've shoved a load of LED bulbs elsewhere, without any issues (headlamps, sidelights & reversing lamp).

I believe if they are not compatable they will just hyper flash.There is only one screw holding the fog lamps in so they are easy to take out whilst changing the bulbs.I have these https://rb.gy/f466l  fitted at the moment,they give off good light but I will put the origionals back in just to keep it origional!.

[Dutchrav]

9 hours ago, glimp said:

Do these cars deliver canbus error messages on the dash display?

No. The IQ does not care about any bulbs. Only cheap LED turnlight bulbs can cause hyperflash.

[Antonio2]

Regarding the "clouding" on the inside of the foglamp lenses, I recently decided to rectify this on our IQ's 2 & 3. Both lamps an both cars had this problem.

As an alternative to Jikky's excellent method shown above for addressing this common problem, I remembered that I had a "fibreglass" pen on my tool kit.

For those of you not familiar with these "pens", they are just like a normal retractable pen, but utilise strands of fibreglass as an abrasive tip. You simply "wind out" a short length of strands and rub away on tarnishing/oxidation etc to remove. In a previous job, we used them to remove tarnishing / oxidation of copper on switch contacts etc.

I removed the lamps by "peeling away " the lower front wheel arch liners to access them.  

After removing the lamp and bulb, the pen is easily inserted inside the lamp and then rubbed against the inside of the lens to remove the film. the fibre glass strands made light work of this (no pun intended !).

Using this method did NOT scratch the glass.

The rubbing action WILL shed bits of the fibres - these were "swept" out of the lamp using an old toothbrush. When the fibre glass refill wears down a new refill is easily "loaded". These pens and refills are very cheap. See photos attached to show pen.

On an unrelated topic - I took a SIDE ON photo of the OFF-SIDE foglamp to show the location of the nearby washer bottle PUMPS above the foglamp, just in case any fellow IQ'ers need to renew them, and don't want to remove the front bumper to access them.

I stand corrected if someone tells me it is easier and faster just to remove the front bumper !