foggy headlights

Ah so it's CONGRESS's fault

Mark

I use rubbing compound by hand. Works great. No need to spend money on a headlight "restoration" kit.

This is what I use. I bought it for a car that needed some oxidation removed.

"The previous administration. It's worse than I thought. We're fighting for legislaion to resolve this. Now, let me make my self perfectly clear."

B.H.O. .

Ah so it's CONGRESS's fault

Mark

Mark wrote in news:8bc9f0d3-026c-49dd-8b63- snipped-for-privacy@h5g2000vbx.googlegroups.com:

I don't think it was a Congressional law. I think this one was an NHTSA modification to FMVSS-108, the NHTSA's lighting regulations.

Automakers in the early-'80s petitioned the NHTSA for permission to

I think the 1987 Mustang was the first car to have the new plastic design. Those headlights were yellowing within a couple of years. They've improved the expoxies a lot since then, but they still eventually go opaque in time.

On 4/28/2012 11:59 AM, Tegger wrote: ...

...

Well, no, not quite...

NHTSA has a bunch of requirements that lighting must meet but they do not mandate any specific material or manufacturing technique, only the performance requirements the end product must meet.

There's a reg's that requires that _if_ a coating is used to meet the performance standards (brightness, color, etc.) that that coating must contain a UV-detectable component so that it (the coating) can be shown to be present in the production products but there's nothing that says if can make the specifications w/o a coating you have to use one for any purpose. The practicalities are that coatings are needed to meet the performance spec's but that's not the way the reg's are written.

The tests are multitudinous and detailed, particularly for color matching. The weathering test is outlined as--

There are something like 300 pages of more fascinating bedtime reading but the word "epoxy" doesn't appear.

More auto junk from Detroit. Back when they still made GOOD cars, you never needed to do s*it like this. When a headlight burned out, you spent $5 for a new bulb, and 10 minutes to install it. If that was my vehicle, I'd raise hell with the manufacturer, and insist they replace it for safety reasons. If they dont, sue the bastards.

Dont you just love the new technology, cheap plastic headlights, cheap fuel pumps (built like kids toys) that die and leave the driver stranded, and the list goes on. Modern cars are GARBAGE!

dpb wrote in news:jnrfhu$g52$ snipped-for-privacy@speranza.aioe.org:

You're right.

But meeting those performance requirements effectively means the application of a coating on the underlying plastic, since there currently does not exist a practical plastic with the stability and surface-hardness required to pass the tests without a coating being applied. My understanding is that the coating ends up being a cross-linked polymer, an epoxy.

wrote

Cars are far more reliable than years ago. Last time I was stranded was

I'm with you, mine do break down, now and again. But much more seldom than before. My work van just rolled over 200,000 miles, and it's still a dependable vehicle.

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

Yup. I'm driving a car with 100,000 plus on it, and it starts every time.

When I was a kid, several! decades ago, a car that old wouldn't reliably make it to the grocery store.

I haven't changed a flat tire in probably 30 years. When I was a kid I did it so often I became skilled at it.

I've no clue on actual materials; whatever the treatment(s) are the spec's are performance not material based is the point.

The abrasion one is probably as minimal of a one as any; I expect the photometry and UV testing are at least as difficult to meet. To my surprise an impact test itself didn't seem to be mentioned...

--

Yet they almost consistenly go 200,000 km, or even 200,000 MILES without ever taking a cover off the engine or replacing any engine internal parts. Try that with a '69 Chevy, or a 55 VW, or a 61 MG - - choose your own poison. And I have owned several vehicles over the last 20 years where I never had to replace so much as ONE headlight bulb, or even tail or signal lamp bulb - getting rid of the vehicles at 12 and 18 years of age with over 240,000km on them. That NEVER happened years ago, Even without DRLs, headlights quite commonly needed replacement every 2 years or so. Tail and signal bulbs went like flashbulbs. Signal flashers were a commonly replaced item - when is the last time you had to go trying to find where the flasher is hidden on a current production vehicle??

And signal self cancellers? Used to have to pop the steering wheel off to replace the little springs, or the plastic parts, every couple of years. As well as the little contact under the wheel that connected the horn button to the wire in the steering column to the horn.

And what about exhausts? Used to have to change the muffler and tail pipe every year and a half, more or less. Now most last the life of the car.

Shock absorbers were generally good for about 25,000 miles or 3 years

- today MOST last well over 60,000 miles, and many the life of the car.

A ten year old car was JUNK back in the sixties and seventies, and you only considered a car with 100,000 miles on it if you had no money and didn't plan on going far from home.

There used to be a service station on every corner - and muffler shops by the dozen, and transmission shops were always busy. Today you can usually get your car fixed the next day at just about any dealership or independent garage instead of having to book a week or more in advance - and that's with a lot more cars - a lot more OLDER cars, and a lot less repair shops.

They sure don't make 'em like they used to - THANK GOODNESS.

And when did you last see a broken headlight??? I'll bet it was a GLASS sealed beam unit.(or involved in a serious collision). Used to be you had stone holes in headlights on a very regular basis. Don't see that today ( a function of both material and "aproach angle" - sloped aerodynamic headlights bounce the stones off)

Yep-- I aim for at least 200K miles these days. And that's likely with 1 new set of plugs, no points, and a couple or 3 timing belts - but that's the only time the timing is looked at.

also the oil changes are 5-7K apart insteat of 2K. the tires last

Oh-- and the body in these NY winters. used to show signs of rust in 2 yrs. My 10 yr old Impala has no rust showing. [there is some rot in the undercarriage]

OTOH- those accursed alloy wheels suck big time. [at least the early

And if you think Detroit gets a pretty penny for replacement parts-- pick up some Audi, Honda or Subaru headlights for fun.

Jim

Back in the 50's, you'd have had a ring job at 50k, rings & bearings by 80k, scrap at 100k

Every 5k clean the plugs and replace them at 10k. Not to mention carb adjustments, choke problems, points and rotor.

There are several restoration kits available and I was getting ready to buy one last year for our '99 Camry. But before I did, I came across a can of auto polishing compound on the shelf and decided to try it. The lenses were fogged so much you could barley see the bulb inside the housing. With about 20 minutes of serious elbow grease (the sweaty kind) on each lens they looked as good as new.

Note I said "Polishing Compound" not "Rubbing Compound" which is a little coarser. Rubbing Compound might work too but that is not what I usedl.

RonB

I see broken down cars along the roads here, all the time (usually a half dozen in the 75mi between here and "home"). Of course, these cars wouldn't be along the side of the road in the North, rather the junk yard, turning back to dust. ;-)

I've still got the original plugs in the Toyota (~250k), and the current timing belt's done 150k (it's not an interference engine, so it's become a bit of a minor amusement to see how long it lasts). Some of my '70s cars had timing chains and the replecement interval on those was only 30k (but it'd take me less than an hour to do, and they were cheap, so it wasn't like it was a big deal)

Yeah, been there with 1970s ones for sure... I had them tubed in the end (which used to be legal where I lived at the time, but I don't think is any more)

cheers

Jules

Most of them don't make it to the junk yard around here - the population density's really low and many people have lots of space to play with, so they just end up rusting away in fields, tucked away behind buildings etc. :-)

Of course rising scrap metal prices have changed that a bit; I do see less than I did 5 years ago, but there's still a lot out there.

snipped-for-privacy@snyder.on.ca wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Ohhh, yeah. Remember also that those sealed-beams were made as cheaply as possible (which was partly the point behind the US sealed-beam law), so the glass was really thin.

Plastic is a lot more forgiving of impacts, so even those vehicles which present a near-vertical surface to stones do not crack the way glass lenses did.