Headlights that don't light

[xaviervp]

What ever happened to real headlights made with glass
I remember a light upgrade to a car was installing (Cibie or Hella) Halogen lamps and they were made of glass not plastic.

All these new lights of today fade out after a few years
sometimes less and they turn into useless pieces of plastic that look bad on a car.

I went out to replace the two headlights for my Ford-F150 and ford wanted $175.00 for each one because they will only sell you the complete assembly including the side light, thats $350+ for the pair, no wonder you see so many cars with faded lights.

Maybe someone will do a study on night accidents and see how many of those cars has faded lights that don't light
the road enough to drive carefully.

I guess all im trying to say is why not come up with a stronger more UV resistant lens for headlights so they don't fade so fast.

 

[tannguyen]

Sylvania has a HID retrofit kit specially for the F-150 (includes new headlights also)...it's not one of those plug and plug kits that is commonly available

 

[Sternlights]

Ford introduced the plastic lens on the US market in 1983. The standards governing anti-UV and anti-scratch protection of these lenses are pretty lax, as evident by a quick walk around the block. Sooner or later, all of the plastic headlamp lenses go cloudy and yellow. Sometimes you can bring them back for a while by polishing with e.g. TR3 blue-label car polish, but sometimes the degradation goes right through and you're forced to buy new headlamps (which will degrade like the old ones over time). The advantage of the plastic lens is lower manufacturing cost and greater impact resistance. I think the Europeans had the better idea: They required glass lenses, but allowed the lenses to be replaceable. We still don't have very many replaceable-lens headlamps in North America, because most types of lamps are not permitted to have them. Europe allowed plastic lenses starting in late '93.

Why not come up with a stronger and more UV-resistant lens? Because the law doesn't say they have to, and that would involve spending a few cents more per headlamp! With the exception of the stylists, we were better off when all vehicles had one of just four size/shape formats of headlamp (large or small round, large or small rectangular). The sealed beams of the day were adequate, not great, but better than many recent-model replaceable-bulb headlamps. They were durable, cheap and easy to replace, totally resistant to environmental degradation or dumb owner tricks (blue bulbs, etc.), and when technical advances became available, they were incorporated into the standard-format lamps so that you could update your old car to new headlamp performance easily and inexpensively. Or, of course, as you mention, for those who knew about it, there were the superior Cibie, Marchal, etc. H4 replacements in the standard sizes. You'd be amazed at the volumes in which those standard-sized H4 lamps still sell.

You don't mention what year your F150 is. There are better and worse headlamp options for most-year F150s.

Daniel J. Stern
Daniel Stern Automotive Lighting Consultancy