Are your headlight lenses getting cloudy?

I guess the cloudy ones that really stand out are the Neons, must be because they are positioned towards the sky more than other cars. Rick

You must not be looking very hard. I see Toyota with yellow lens all the time. SO's old Camry was terrible. I have a '92 F150 with some really nasty looking headlights, but my other recent Fords seem to have held up just fine. And even my '86 Sable had good looking headlight lens after 10 years (traded it then), but the stupid light bar looked pretty bad. I have a friend with an older Buick LeSabre ('91 I think) and it has some pretty nasty looking lens as well.

I suspect some vehicles suffer more than others because of where and how they are driven (because the outer coating is abraded off by grit). For instance my F150 has spent a lot of time on dirt roads and dusty fields. I assume that all this exposure to dust must have eroded the lens' surface - I know the bumper looks like it was sand blasted in some areas (painted steel bumper).

Ed

Reply to
Rick
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I agree with you.

Nope, it affects all makes with plastic lenses. Some sooner, and some later, but it does affect all of them. Volvo got bitten so badly by plastic lenses (made by a very reputable lighting company, yet) in their '86-'93 240 and '89-'94 740/940 cars that they went back to glass and are only just now beginning to use plastic again. LOTS of Japanese cars with five or six years on 'em and cloudy lenses, even up here in non-desert Toronto. Plenty of GMs, though GM does seem to use a higher grade of lens material that doesn't go yellow quite as quickly.

DS

Reply to
Daniel J. Stern

~We shouldn't have to apply anything, period. I may be wrong, but I dont see ~other makes of old cars, like Toyota, with this problem, only Ford and ~Chrysler. Even GM seems to be immune. Why is that? Is it as preventable as I ~suspected? ~Rick

My '99 Taurus's headlights are like new, but my '99 Camry headlights look foggy -- and they were dim to start with. All headlights should be standard to provide everyone with reasonable lighting.

Reply to
Father Guido

A 1998 Chevy Metro and a 1993 Dodge Neon both have the opaque headlights... both made in Japan, as if that really has an impact on the usage of poor quality plastic lenses.

My 1992 Chrysler and 2000 Dodge with plastic lenses showed no problems.

Reply to
dold

Well...no. The Metro's lamps were made in Japan, but there's no such thing as a 1993 Dodge Neon (the Neon was introduced in 1995), and the Neon's headlamps are US-made.

Reply to
Daniel J. Stern

In addition to the lenses, reflector efficiency is very low in these molded headlamp units. My Explorer has some of the worst lighting I've ever driven with. Bad enough on a good night, dangerous on a rainy night. The need to engineer highly efficient reflectors and change the lens formula so that it remains clear. Or maybe go back to glass with evaporative deposited aluminum reflectors on aircraft aluminum housings. If ever there was a good reason for a recall, this would be it.

-- Take care,

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

VIDEO PRODUCTION ? FILM SCANNING ? DVD MASTERING ? AUDIO RESTORATION Hear my Kurzweil Creations at:

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Reply to
Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

My wife's '89 Mitsu Galant has no yellowing or cloudy lenses at all. Why? Because they use GLASS lenses. Nothing substitutes for glass when it come to longevity.

-- Take care,

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

VIDEO PRODUCTION ? FILM SCANNING ? DVD MASTERING ? AUDIO RESTORATION Hear my Kurzweil Creations at:

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Reply to
Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

Slight slip. 1993 Dodge Colt. Piece of crap from the day it was built, headlights so yellow in 2002 that they looked like fog lights.

Reply to
dold

Unless a rock of just the right size hits it - you might get a tiny nick in the plastic, the glass will break requiring replacement. 8^) I'm guessing that glass would hold up slightly better against sand blasting, but not sure about that.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

Reply to
Bill Putney

H'm. I'm interested to know how you arrive at that conclusion.

I'm guessing it's a pre-2003 model. The '03 up Explorers actually have rather efficient and well-focused low beams, but the previous models have three generations of really awful headlamps.

I'm still curious how you arrive at the idea that the reflectors in your lamps aren't efficient. Generally, reflective efficiency is not a problem in even poorly-performing headlamps. The common problems are insufficient active optical area (lens and reflector too small), poor beam pattern formation and focus, and low-efficacy light sources.

There's nothing wrong with nonglass, nonmetal reflector substrates *per se*. Of course, "plastic" covers a lot of territory. Cheap thermoplastic is ill-suited to the job, but it has been used in a great many North American-market headlamps, because beam focus requirements are lax and it is, well, cheap.

On the other hand, some of the very best headlamps have "plastic" (thermoset phenolic) reflectors.

All of them use vapor-coat aluminum reflector "shiny stuff".

DS

Reply to
Daniel J. Stern

Until a road rock comes along. *Krunch!* (Or lots and lots of little pieces of road grit, which pit and "sandblast" the lens until it disperses the light just as badly as a clouded-up plastic lens).

Hardened/toughened glass is where it's at...

Reply to
Daniel J. Stern

Hardened toughened glass, and in a STANDARD FORM FACTOR (or three) so that every car made can use one of maybe 3-4 standard lamp designs, all of which work well and can be kept in stock on parts store shelves. Instead of a custom lamp design for every different car model, some of which work OK and some of which barely work at all, and NONE of which are sitting on the shelf down at Joes Parts Shack when you need them.

;-p

Reply to
Steve

My '92 Explorer had the best headlights I've ever seen, and my '99 is only slightly less impressive.

Of course, the '92 Explorer did catch fire and burn up, but that was after I owned it, at about the 150,000 mile point. I don't think it got any more TLC after it left here.

Even the '99 Explorer's lights are about 200% better than the crappy lights on our '97 Sebring convertible. The convert's have not yellowed, either, though come to think of it I don't even know if they are glass. It mostly just sits in the garage. It's got 15,000 miles on it since we got it new in Sep '96.

The '99 Explorers "fog" lights, make pretty good corner lights -- the Sebring's might as well not be there. The beam is so low and narrow they only illuminate stuff you're just about to run into, or over.

Jack

Reply to
Jack

The problem with all the vehicles you claim have great headlights is that they piss *everyone else* off. Ford trucks/SUVs in particular I find to be painfully glaring when following me, the low beams still have enough stray upward light that I can't even glance at my rear view mirrors.

nate

Reply to
Nate Nagel

That's true, but secondary. The problem with the vehicles he claims have great headlights is that they *don't*. I hesitate to imagine what-all headlamps Jack has driven behind to have such low standards that the '92 and '99 Explorer headlamps, both of which are objectively poor, are the best ones he's seen. He mentions a '97 Sebring, and that's certainly got bad lamps.

But y'know, if you've been eating dirt all your life and somebody offers you a bowl of grass clippings, you'll probably say the grass clippings are the best food you've ever tasted!

Reply to
Daniel J. Stern

Is there a publically available headlight comparison?

Ed

Reply to
C. E. White

A lot of very mundane cars, just like everybody else except the esoteric gurus here, of course.

Now you've made me want to see if I can even remember all the cars I've owned, let alone the ones I've driven in the past ~50 years. Let's just say...a lot. But the 92 Explorer's lights were the most satisfying. Hey, I LIKE it when they put a lot of light everywhere, and I got very few complaints.

Of course sitting up high in a 4x4 will put the lights in a smaller vehicle's rear view mirror, so I stay further back at night stops.

Maybe my lights are adjusted properly, and I don't usually drive over

100 mph -- suppose that could be it?

Jack

Reply to
Jack

Fascinating.

No, not really. Most likely what's going on is that the aspects of beam distribution that tend to influence subjective opinion of headlamp quality are generally not the same aspects that influence actual beam performance (i.e., the degree to which you *can* see at night, vs. the degree to which you *think* you can see at night). Gurus and geeks will tend to squawk about objectively poor beam patterns, while most people seldom comment one way or the other, and a few people praise poor beams. The opposite is also true: Subjectively-poor beams can actually give extremely good objective performance. It's a question of how safe you *are* vs. how safe you

*feel*. The human visual system is a very poor judge of its own performance, and is easily "fooled".

The headlamps in question ('92 Explorer) have low overall output, poor focus, a low peak intensity, narrow beam width and high levels of upward stray light. All of those factors add up to an objectively poor beam.

Reply to
Daniel J. Stern

Yeah, stop by my house and I'll take you for a ride in the Porsche with the Cibie E-codes, then every other headlight you sit behind for the rest of your life will seem wussy and ineffective by comparison, unless you've got some pretty nice hardware of your own :)

nate

(unless, of course, I get the '55 coupe together, in which case I'll probably swap the lights over to that car.)

Reply to
Nate Nagel

Now, THAT is fascinating!

Of course I don't have the ol' '92 around anymore so further discussion of it's headlight performance would be worse than subjective. I ran them day and night and changed bulbs perhaps two times in the 11 years I owned it. I put better-than-OEM Halogen bulbs in it, so maybe thats why I was happy with it -- or maybe they were holographic and gave only the appearance of projected perfection.

I went from a '81 Chevy pickup to the '92 Explorer, and believe me -- the Explorer lights were infinitely better than those of the Chevy PU.

The '99's low beams are average, the "brights" are pretty good, focus could be better, and I like being able to read the graffiti on the under-side of the over-pass, but the "narrow" comment above is absurd -- subjectively speaking -- but like I said, my everyday comparison is the '97 Sebring. I have yet to change a headlight bulb on the '99 Explorer. I can hardly wait to see what it will do with AM bulbs -- probably have to get a special license for it.

My first car (and my only other Chrysler product) was a '47 Dodge, and with the lights and the tin-foil body work, I think I've had my last Chrysler, if the rest are like the Sebring. Don't even get me started on its electrics and ghost-ridden alarm system.

And 25 mpg -- BFD.

Jack

Reply to
Jack

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