99 infiniti I 30 -- same as Maxima I think.
are headlight "covers" plastic or glass?- look plastic to me

 

'99 Maxima headlight lenses are plastic.

I can't speak to the i30 ...

 

All the lights up front on the i30 are plastic except the forward facing fog lights, which are glass.

 

It was in the 80's when the sealed beam headlamps started getting fazed out, by the mid 90's they were mostly all gone. If you remember the old Oldsmobile square headlighs, they were the whole glass assembly with filament inside. Haven't had those on vehicles for quite some time, I'd have to guess your '99 is plastic just based on that alone.

 

All the I30 headlights are plastic. Note that they are NOT interchangeable with the Maxima

However, the car called Maxima overseas is actually our I30, not our Maxima. Therefore, the European Maxima headlights will fit the US I30, but not the US Maxima

I found some eBay listings in Europe for headlights for the (Euro) Maxima

But DO NOT BUY THEM from the UK!! British-market headlights are meant for the opposite side of the road, which means they are unsafe to use in the US. The same goes for JDM headlights. Buy them from Continental/Mainland Europe (Spain, France, Germany, Italy, etc)

The European Maxima headlights use H4 bulbs. You can get a conversion harness from rallylights.com

 

The 1998 Maxima was the first year Nissan did plastic lens on the headlight. 1997 and older were glass.

 

yep, my first set of headlights on my 95 were glass, ugly tho, but durable.

 

I reconditioned the plastic lights on a couple of my cars last winter using a product named SafeTClear liquid. So far so good on the coating. It looks to me like a very thin polyurethane varnish that can be applied with a blue paper towel. I used two coats.

https://safetclear.com/

 

hey craig, just picked up a safe t clear kit off of amazon that says it'll do 8 sets of lenses, 22.00 shipped. they wanted almost double off their website. link

 

Good price. It seems to go a long way. With a 16 oz bottle, I treated the 98, the Honda, the new R34 style lights for the 99, and a neighbor's car. I have way over a 1/2 bottle left.

 

Hey, since you have plenty of extra joy juice for the headlights, I'll let you come down and do the headlights on my Lexus for the experience.

 

On the next time, I make a trip down I-30 to the DFW area, I should stop by Plano.