But you still have weight. Car makers are fighting for ounces these days so you won't find an extra couple of pounds of glass. Once the Green New Deal gets going we'll be driving electric scooters with a canvas shell.
For household lights: Once the incandescent bulbs disappeared, I used halogen for a few years. They didn't last any longer but they did cost
5-6 times more.Then I finally tried the LEDs. Not much more costly than the halogens but seem to last forever. Best deal now.
My 3 most often used household lights always burned out in about 30 days. Incandescent and halogen. My 3 LED lights in the same fixtures have so far lasted 3-4 years.
On 12/15/2019 10:54 AM, Ed Pawlowski wrote: ...
Sad, but true. They could take out a bunch of the foo-foo electronics to make up for and I'd be ok...much happier, in fact :)
Same thing with the spare...when one is in remote areas and where flats are not that an infrequent an event, the donut can be a real pita.
Some I guess don't even have that any more...
I still have not seen anything that says these headlights save that much gas.
Bullshit. I bet a sealed beam weighs less than that big headlight assembly.
Frank probably lives in an HOA governed, gated, community and he wants everyone to paint their house the same color as his.
They have LEDs in a sealed beam form factor now.
It is complicated. Weight saving is best in moving parts like engines and wheels to conserve energy of moving these heavy parts around.
Then there is the cost of the manufacture. I recall even over 20 years ago that a metal part like a fender or hood would require a maybe eight million dollar stamping die and complex parts might require two dies to make. A plastic part could be made in a much cheaper die. This is why the limited editions like the Corvette and Fiero were made with plastic bodies.
Probably light weighting and cost of manufacture both led to plastic lenses.
You said a pound or so doesn't matter. But a pound here and a pound there across all the components of a car adds up and it does matter. More importantly, with these new headlights you can see farther, the light has a better pattern, lower on left, higher on right. Yes, the plastic lenses do cloud up, but overall, I'm happy with them. It's also possible that there are difference in how fast they cloud up and how long they last after polishing them due to the particular material used. I've gotten them crystal clear again and then they go for several years. I've done it twice now, with great results. Not ideal, but it works. My main complaint is that the halogen bulbs don't last anywhere near as long as the old sealed beams. Those went ten years, these go maybe two. But now LEDs are displacing those.
They can't by themselves. But the others are correct the manufacturers are down to counting ounces and miniscule dynamic effects and the like in order to gain on the mandated fleet averages...distortion of the market by artificial and external reqmts.
"Weight is weight" Doesn't matter where it is.
Return to the mandate of a given size and general pattern for the assembly as was the reason for the 1940 mandate and they'll be dime a dozen commodity.
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They have LEDs in a sealed beam form factor now.
Undoubtedly w/ a plastic degrading lens... :)
A 7" sealed beam weighs about 1 pound 3 oz (the one I have has sealant stuck around the edge and on the terminals and it is 1# 3.9 oz)
I bet that beg assed poly carbonate lens & reflector weighs more than that before you put a bulb in it.
On 12/15/2019 12:09 PM, trader_4 wrote: ...
I've been unable to come close to taking enough material off to be noticeably better at all, what more "crystal clear".
I even went as far as to use some 200 grit wet/dry on a small corner of one and tried to polish it out...no dice; the cloudiness and crazing is more than just a thin surface layer.
There is no inspection in this state but Darwinian selection takes care of the weirder stuff.
Insurance was the same way. I don't know if there are any states left where insurance isn't required but at one time there were as many uninsured drivers whether or not it was a requirement. When I lived in Massachusetts you picked your plates up at the insurance office. Foolproof? MA still had uninsured drivers in the same proportion as Maine where insurance wasn't required unless you'd been in an accident.
Ah, the good old days when cars had real frames and you could convert them into a pickup if you needed one.
Here is something I clipped to verify the moving parts statement:
Wheels Standard alloy wheels, even on high performance cars, are often made with looks in mind rather than performance, and can weigh a hell of a lot – lightweight wheels are a significant improvement. A typical set of standard 18in alloys can weigh up to 12kg each, while lightweight aftermarket ones can be as light as 7kg, giving a saving of 20kg in total. But, and this is a big but, wheels are not only unsprung weight (which we’ll cover later), but are also rotating, which massively magnifies the effect of the weight – some say as much as 10 times over normal weight loss, which in this instance would mean the equivalent of saving 200kg from the body of the car. One thing is for sure, the real world effect of simply fitting lightweight wheels is very noticeable in all performance aspects.
Elsewhere I see that the weight of glass in a car is only 3% so weight saving there is not all that important.
On 12/15/2019 1:21 PM, Frank wrote: ...
No. A pound is a pound, wherever it comes from. A pound of glass weighs the same as a pound of steel (or a pound of feathers).
The dynamic effects are immaterial when comparing something such as headlights as the subject here; they're all static and comparing them to wheels for dynamics is nonsensical.
It was common as hell to see one sealed beam out on a car. I had to replace 4 or 5 on my cars. You hardly ever see a car with one side out now. I only replaced one bulb on all my cars since my '88 Celebrity, which was my first without sealed beams. It was the Celebrity, after 14 years. I've used Blue Magic on two cars when the lens clouded up, one was gone shortly thereafter, and the other was still good 6 years later.
I used the 3m lens restoration kit. They give you a drill attachment and several grades of pads. Worked well for me on bmw, I know someone who used it on Mercedes too. You really need a coarse pad to start.
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