Car warranty

[dpb]

Still don't stand up to gravel roads and wind-blown sand, though, worth anything.

[dpb]

+1

I don't recall ever having a broken headlight on one of the cars in 60 years. A tractor or two and one of the work trucks but none of those were road damage.

[invalid unparseable]

Coating on plastic is important. Best if contains antioxidants and scratch resistant materials. I have noted frosted lenses on some expensive vehicles and figured they used cheap lenses.

Not sure but believe polishing kits at auto stores may contain the antioxidants and scratch resistant finishes. You could polish a plastic lens with toothpaste and it would look good but not contain the protective coating.

[gfretwell]

The problem is that the U/V damage goes all the way through the plastic and polishing only tries to recover the surface. Plastic will never be as hard or U/V resistant as glass.

[Clare Snyder]

It seams like I replaced 10 or more a week with holes in them when I was working as a mechanic - and I had several broken in each of my cars - the Mini, Valiant, Darft and Ramcharger before replacing them with the more durable lead crystal Bosch or Cicie lights - and even with those I got stone pits, but they didn't punch through. We had a lot of gravel secondary roads back then (and I lost 2 windsheilds inside a month on the Fargo from stones thrown by passing trucks on PAVED roads) Thr plastic halogen sealed beams by comparison were virtually bullet-proof - - - and didn't seem to yellow like the aero headlights do today - must have been different plastic.

[Clare Snyder]

Thankfully we have a lot less gravel roads today and I have not noticed much sand-blast effect. It does help to touch them up every year or so though.

[dpb]

On 12/12/2019 9:52 AM, [e-mail] wrote: ...

+238.5

I've polished the beegeezus out of the ones on the work truck...you'd have to take off good fraction of the material it appears to get rid of the crazing...it's not just a thin surface.

The 300M was almost as bad when traded it off.

It's terrible choice of material for purpose.

[gfretwell]

Even if breakage was a serious problem with sealed beams it is still a $5 fix, not hundreds of dollars. I just never had the problem. If you are losing that many headlights your windshield bill must be stupendous.

[Vic Smith]

I used a cheap lens restorer called Blue Magic on 2 older cars a while back. The headlights were yellowed and fogged badly. Cleaned right up. Took about 5 minute a lens. Lenses looked almost brand new. But some people left reviews that it didn't work. So it depends on the plastic used in the lens.

[Clare Snyder]

Like I said - 2 within amonth - at $600 a pop. Would have been more expensive if it had missed the windsheild and chipped the custom pearl paint - - - -

[Clare Snyder]

It also depends on whether you can read and follow directions - - - - Apparently it doesn't work for most republicans - -- - -

[dpb]

Well, we don't have any fewer and won't in my lifetime nor almost certainly even in grandchildrens'.

Just making them from glass again would solve essentially all the problem...even if only the outer lens were.

[trader_4]

Glass probably isn't suitable because of all the complex shapes used in today's cars and the way that they are held in. The old sealed beam units sucked as far as lighting up the road too. Back then, most of the rest of the world used separate bulbs and lenses that gave brighter light and put the beam in a more precise shape and location. But they did that with glass lenses back then, so it wasn't a glass issue, just the US being stuck on stupid. Today's headlights are far better than the old ones. But I've seen reviews where how well headlights light up the road varies significantly between one car and another, even within the same manufacturer's product line. I would bet that's due to trading off styling for performance.

[invalid unparseable]

The plastics used for lenses are generally polycarbonate and polymethylmethacrylate. PMMA has the best UV resistance. Both have about the same scratch resistance which can be improved by coatings. UV resistant coatings and antioxidants help PC the most is it absorbs and is degraded by UV.

[dpb]

The outer lens would easily be formed w/ glass for any vehicle I have or have ever had. What that outer shield is made of need have no bearing on what the lighting element is.

Certainly when the present cover is 90% occluded the lighting effectiveness is nil no matter the source.

Alto certainly it does appear the actual lighting effectiveness may play a subservient role in the design over appearance and/or other styling choices (such as wind resistance for the ever elusive fleet mandated mileage figure that is so much the driving force in these silly decisions to save a half ounce here and there). Those mandates should go away, too; let the market forces operate.

--

[dpb]

I don't know (and don't really care) what they are...all I know (and care about) is that they don't last worth crap in operating conditions where I live and drive.

[invalid unparseable]

Point is that if properly made they work fine. If you live in a sunny climate with a lot of grit maybe sand blowing around you are going to have problems and that include the paint on your car.

[Terry Coombs]

  That was totally uncalled for Clare . Why did you have to drag politics into a very civil discussion ?

[dpb]

Point is "they DON'T work fine" or there wouldn't be all the polishing kits on sale and complaints, even where there isn't quite such an environment as here.

As for paint, it also suffers, yes, but not nearly as badly recent years as did for a few right after the EPA banned nearly everything volatile the manufacturers had been using. For a while clearcoats out here almost universally failed within a year or two at the outside...of course, had one of those fail even while still in the pretty benign TN conditions altho it took a little longer than that.

[gfretwell]

I would put a sealed beam, even the old technology incandescent, not even the halogens, up against any new style with a cloudy lens. There is absolutely no reason why the current technology lighting could not be put in a sealed beam. That eliminates cloudy lenses, bad reflectors and $300-400 proprietary light assemblies. That tiny hit you take in aerodynamics doesn't come near covering the extra cost over the life of the car.