Headlights MOT failure - dirty projector?

[JackSW]

Hi Guys,

I purchased a 2007 1.9 Passat in Jan this year and had to take it in for it's MOT last week.

It failed on a few things most of which have since been fixed but the one outstanding is:

Offside Front Headlamp has a product on the lens so that the light output is severely reduced (1.7.5a)

The guy at the garage told me I need to buy some new headlights as the inside projector lense was all clouded up and severely restricting the light output, so much so that the lights were hardly registering on the tester.

Looking at them I didn't think they looked that bad so I came to this forum for some help!

In the past with older cars I had headlights that had faded on the front of the light itself, I was able to sand these down and get them through an MOT but this time the outside of the light looks fine it's just the projector lens inside that looks slightly cloudy.

Is it possible to clean these projector lenses? I have been doing some googling and some people have suggested using a heat gun / putting the entire light in an oven to melt the seal to crack them open an clean. This sounds a bit risky but I found another post where someone said they had some success using a bent coat hanger and some cloth to get into the projector from behind and clean it. I don't know if anyone here has had any success doing this?

Cheers