Are your headlight lenses getting cloudy?

Finally we agree (that we aren't going to convince the other - I was
almost there last night).

I'll say it one more time and then I'll sut up: A light bulb immediately
produces some heat and some light. The light is useful. It does
eventually get absorbed somewhere as heat, but before it does it serves
a useful purpose. That part that can serve a useful purpose (visible
light) is what is plugged into any efficacy formula as the (useful)
output. That is what is done in science and engineering for evaluating
*any* process or mechanism or process. The useful output has to be
defined and agreed upon. You define it wrong, and the results are
meaningless for evaluating, comparng, decision making, etc.

That's it.

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

 

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.

 

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.)

 

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

 

I think they work so well that's it's difficult to tell if you have one not
working unless you go out and look.

 

Jack wrote:

Well, the 81 Chevy would have had good old sealed beams. Now 99.9% of
the sealed-beams I've ever had were about 100 times BETTER than 90s
vintage plastic Explorer headlamps (or pretty much ANY 1990s plastic
specific-to-a-given-model headlamp). But its always possible that you
had some really, really, really poor non-halogen sealed beams in the
Chevy, or halogens with a cracked outer housing that allowed moisture to
darken the reflectors, or a wiring problem.

 

My '92 Explorer headlights were glass.


Jack

 

Ummm...no. They weren't. Not unless you bought your '92 Explorer in
Germany, where glass-and-metal standard-format 200mm x 142mm rectangular
lamps were used (same size/shape as the large rectangular sealed beams in
your '81 Chev pickup, but in Europe they were a replaceable-bulb H4 unit).

North American-market Explorer headlamps used a plastic lens and a plastic
reflector.

 

OMG! They were plastic -- and I loved them?

Eeeeuuuuwwww.


Jack

 

Y'know, Jack, I'm beginning to get the sense that you *might* be mockin'
me... ;-)

 

And no apparent signs of incipient cloudiness so far...

DAS

For direct contact replace nospam with schmetterling
---

 

Well, one dislikes being fooled -- but they sure LOOKED good!


Jack

 

The facts are that the lights on the older Mitsu work MUCH better than those
on the newer Ford. That car has 300K miles on it, lots of which is highway
driving, but I keep a good distance between me and the next car in line, so
I didn't get to test the flying rock theory.


--
Take care,

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

VIDEO PRODUCTION . FILM SCANNING . DVD MASTERING . AUDIO RESTORATION
Hear my Kurzweil Creations at: http://www.dv-clips.com/theater.htm
Business sites at:
www.dv-clips.com
www.mwcomms.com
www.adventuresinanimemusic.com
-

 

It wasn't until years after I bought my Explorer that I got into souped-up
flashlights. I own a 10,000,000 candlepower spotlight and did some Googling
on it, and came across a forum called Candlepowerforums.com which is
populated with serious flashlight enthusiasts (I never knew such an interest
group existed). I spent some time on those forums and got a real education
about how lamps, reflectors and bulb efficiencies affect lumens output. I
learned that wattage does not equal lumens.
One of the things I discovered about my spotlight and another Brinkman
Q-Beam that I bought over 25 years ago, was that the reflectors are first
surface mirrors of very high optical quality.
Contrasted with the hazy, porous aluminum evaporative coating on Ford's
plastic reflectors, I now understand why even my 100W 9007 bulbs failed to
produce as much usable light as my Mitsubishi's 55W lamps.
If you open the back of the lamp service compartment on the Ford while the
lights are on at night, you'll notice where all the light that's not hitting
the road is going--inside the compartment--a significant amount of light
penetrates the reflective coating.
I'm not saying that the lenses don't play an equally important role, but the
role of the reflectors has not been discussed in Ford forums as far as I
have read.
The guys on Candlepowerforums are designing their own flashlights, or
modifying commercial models costing up to $3000 each. I never realized there
was so much science to headlamps, but the technical discussions there have
been VERY illuminating (pun intended).

It is a '98 model.
It has three problems:
Very low current-handling wiring
Bad lenses
Bad reflectors.

I was blaming beam patterns initially, but I came to realize they are not
the whole issue.

When the plastic reflectors have a few hours on them, they start to get
clouded. The heat of the lamps begins to break down the plastic and the
coating, causing microscopic rippling of the surface, and that begins to
scatter the light, rather than reflect it at precise angles.

Indeed, but it's what that aluminum is deposited on that determines how well
it holds up. My '98 Ford may have been much better when new, but when I
bought it off lease (3 years old), the lighting sucked then. Some of the
newer cars have really shiny, polished reflectors and clear lenses and they
do provide nice lighting. I drove a friend's Kia Sportage and it had
mediocre lighting. Two years later, he bought a Kia Sedona, and the lighting
was MUCH better--I could drive on an interstate with just lowbeams and have
plenty of light where it needed to be.

I really wish Ford would have a recall on these headlights. I'm about to
drive 1150 miles to FL and I am forced to plan my trip around daylight,
rather than take advantage of less traffic overnight.


--
Take care,

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

VIDEO PRODUCTION . FILM SCANNING . DVD MASTERING . AUDIO RESTORATION
Hear my Kurzweil Creations at: http://www.dv-clips.com/theater.htm
Business sites at:
www.dv-clips.com
www.mwcomms.com
www.adventuresinanimemusic.com
-

 

Regarding this matter, when I first bought my 98 Explorer, lots of oncoming
motorists flashed their highbeams at me. I took it back to the dealer and
told them the lights were misadjusted. They told me they were correctly
adjusted.
My friend's 2001 Kia Sportage had the same problem, the lights would shine
right into the passenger compartment of the car in front of me, even if I
was back 100'.
I ended up adjusting my lights myself and that improved my visibility and
stopped the flashing from oncoming drivers.
Factories make errors.

--
Take care,

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

VIDEO PRODUCTION . FILM SCANNING . DVD MASTERING . AUDIO RESTORATION
Hear my Kurzweil Creations at: http://www.dv-clips.com/theater.htm
Business sites at:
www.dv-clips.com
www.mwcomms.com
www.adventuresinanimemusic.com
-

 

In our business we see plenty of high mileage older Explores that do not
have clouded leases. Regardless of brand or model clouded headlamp covers
are a result of poor maintenance, period. Lens cover should be polished
to prevent the clouding. There are several commercially available lens
cleaners the will remove the clouding. One can then keep them clear by
applying a polymer polish on occasion


mike hunt

 

I do polish mine regularly, but there is nothing I can do about the
reflectors inside. My lenses are pitted from sandblast on the highway, so I
use polish to fill in some of the smaller pitting to increase clarity. It
barely makes a difference, but at least I'm extending the life of the lens.

 

What polish do you use or it's equally hopless. I am thinking of a
plastic polish:
1. Blue Magic, Pep Boys
2. Meguiar's PastX, directly from Meguiar.com
3. Have seen special kits and polishes from Novus #1 #2 #3, 3M, and
other. If you used the really tough plastic polish, #3 for example,
would it matter or there not much more to polish before something goes
south?

 

TR3-brand car polish, green label.

Remember, you're *not* polishing plastic; you're polishing the hardcoat
applied to the surface of the plastic -- essentially buffing-out a chalky
paint job.

 

Why do you put up with having to periodically polish headlamp lenses? It is
not a maintenance item covered in your manual. We should go after the car
mfgrs somehow for putting out an usafe, mediocre product, like a
class-action something or other. These things are a hazard to everyone, and
Neons are the worst out there, some lenses are opaque. The 96 model year is
just starting to turn cloudy.
Rick

TR3-brand car polish, green label.

Remember, you're *not* polishing plastic; you're polishing the hardcoat
applied to the surface of the plastic -- essentially buffing-out a chalky
paint job.