303 stained my headlamps?

[Sb5181]

This car, the 2005 Mercury Montego, came with non-projector HIDs, almost 20 years ago and before this car, the Lincoln Mark VIII!

I had the mark 8 when I was like 17 or 18. Thinking back the headlight bulb was covered by a black housing of some sort which I thought odd at the time. All I know is that I had to turn the bright lights on every chance I could because I couldn’t see 10 feet ahead of me with the low beams on


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[rlmccarty2000]

I see so many cars with “cataracts” around where I live I wonder how people drive at night. I don’t mean a little cloudy either, some look white. People don’t seem to care though. Since there is no annual inspection anymore people get away with driving the most unsafe vehicles that will still roll. I hope the new laser type headlights will increase visibility but I worry about all the folks with the jacked up pickup trucks permanently blinding me.

 

[IceQube]

This car, the 2005 Mercury Montego, came with non-projector HIDs, almost 20 years ago and before this car, the Lincoln Mark VIII!

The Lincoln Mark VIII was the first domestic vehicle with a HID system.

I had the mark 8 when I was like 17 or 18. Thinking back the headlight bulb was covered by a black housing of some sort which I thought odd at the time. All I know is that I had to turn the bright lights on every chance I could because I couldn’t see 10 feet ahead of me with the low beams on

The issue with the Lincoln was that its HID system sucked. It was the only DC (direct current) HID system, which made for short bulb life, as the electrons would bombard and degrade only one electrode of the HID bulb. All HID systems are now AC (alternating current) based, so both electrodes are equally bombarded and degraded by electrons, thereby prolonging bulb life. When only one electrode is degraded by electron bombardment, the gap between the electrodes quickly becomes way too big for the bulb to be reliably ignited.

That's interesting that your bulb was covered by a black housing. Was this housing on the bulb itself, or was it separate? I think you probably mean separate. A separate cover for the bulb would be known as a "bulb shield." But most bulb shields are going to be silver in color. Black coverings are usually found on bulbs themselves, and on HID bulbs, the black ceramic on the bulb is known as a "shadow mask." Shadow masks are used on HID bulbs in reflector-based systems to control the light. Reflector-based HID systems require the shadow mask to better control the light output. The shadow mask creates the cutoff by limiting the amount of light from the HID hitting the bottom of the reflector bowl.

The issue with the Lincoln is that it is a reflector based HID system, but it used a special type of HID bulb (9500) which did not have any sort of shadow mask. As a result, the headlamps had to be aimed extremely low to control glare. And that's why you could barely see much ahead. Lincoln made many engineering mistakes with their HID system--which is pretty par for the course when it comes to Ford/Lincoln in general. A HID system with a limited bulb life that also provided little useful illumination. As a result, Ford started selling retrofit kits to convert the car back to halogen bulbs!

I see so many cars with “cataracts” around where I live I wonder how people drive at night. I don’t mean a little cloudy either, some look white. People don’t seem to care though. Since there is no annual inspection anymore people get away with driving the most unsafe vehicles that will still roll. I hope the new laser type headlights will increase visibility but I worry about all the folks with the jacked up pickup trucks permanently blinding me.

30 minutes of effort with any off-the-shelf headlamp restoration kit from Wal-Mart would go a long way in saving lives. Years ago, I attended a conference in Detroit which directly quantified the number of lives lost by hazed over headlamps, and the number was in the 1000s. Headlamp clarity is more than just an aesthetic issue. It's a real safety issue.

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Back to the original topic: today, I purchased a 3M heavy duty lens restoration kit in an attempt to sand and polish out the 303 stains before I sell my headlamps. Even the heavy duty kit did little to nothing to touch the 303 stains. Looks like 303 really does penetrate plastic! The 3M kit did, however, easily remove most of the scratches and stuff on the lens!

View attachment 67017

 

[rlmccarty2000]

Any good APC should remove 303 Aerospace Protectant. I’ve been using the stuff for a long time and have never had it to stain anything. I’ve gotten it on my clear plastic dash lens covers and it comes off by wiping and a little glass cleaner. Maybe 303 has changed their formula?

 

[Belo]

And have you done the computer modeling and used a goniophotometer to verify your statement? Many HID systems designed by actual engineers and not random forum users emit dangerous levels of glare, such as the ones on the Chrysler 300.

There's nothing safe about an unqualified person in their home garage stuffing a random projector behind a random lens. If actual engineers can't always get it right, what makes the average Joe any more likely to get it right?

Fact of the matter is that many "clear" lens will influence the beam. Many times in headlamp development, the entire design must be revised because the lens creates unwanted internal reflections. How are you going to test for and eliminate these unwanted reflections with a random projector, a random lens, and no modeling software or measuring equipment? Can your eyes tell the difference between 700 and 1000 candela? These are the glare point threshold values. Do you know where the glare points are even?

And the "hid only belongs in projectors" meme needs to be buried. There are plenty of exemplary HID systems from Lexus that use reflectors rather than projectors. Early LS400, ES330, IS300, GS430, etc.

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with how nice and distinct the cutoff from a hid is, I'm not sure you really need to perform an expensive test. Install HID kit. Go out in the road and have your wife let you know if she's being blinded or not. Or here's another one, Driving said system for 10 years and never once hitting a deer or being flashed by another driver.

And no, I'm not using a HID kit that was designed by a forum user, but an aftermarket system installed into my g8, which subsequent holden models came with HIDs.

PS you didn't answer my question.

 

[IceQube]

you're so passionate about this that I'm now curious about why.

Headlamp development is my job.

And put into a proper projector housing, there's nothing dangerous with about a HID.

The US government disagrees.

CBP Targets, Intercepts Illegally Imported HID Headlamps | U.S. Customs and Border Protection

with how nice and distinct the cutoff from a hid is, I'm not sure you really need to perform an expensive test. Install HID kit. Go out in the road and have your wife let you know if she's being blinded or not.

Many people in the HID retrofit community are obsessed with the idea of a cutoff. A cutoff does not, and cannot prevent glare. A cutoff really has little to no bearing on the performance of a headlamp. I rarely discuss or mention "cutoff" among fellow engineers. The focus is instead on whether the headlamp can control light at 1U, 1.5L-L and 0.5U, 1.5L-L. Many older yet exemplary headlamps have little or no defined cutoff but instead they project what can be best described as a "blob" of light.

Consider this: A human's eyes are about 2.5 inches apart, and they're about 1 inch in height. So a human's eyes are contained within an imaginary box of about 2.5 inches by 1 inch. A cutoff does not control or limit the amount of light hitting an oncoming driver's eyes. A sharp line on the horizon, below which there is light, and above which there is no light, does not limit the amount of light hitting this small 2.5" by 1" box. Our eyes are not 30 feet apart. People love to post images of their grandiose cutoffs against a wall and comment how remarkably wide their cutoff is, but that's completely beside the point. Our eyes are not 30 feet apart, and a 30 feet wide cutoff doesn't have any bearing on glare. What does matter is a projector's ability to limit the light reaching that imaginary 2.5" x 1" box in which our eyes are. You can achieve sufficient glare control with or without a distinct cutoff because that area is so small. More recent projectors will actually have a little dip in the cutoff to ensure that this 2.5" x 1" box is shaded.

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View attachment 67054

So, what does control glare is really aim. You can have the sharpest cutoff known to man, but if your lamps are aimed too far upward, no cutoff will help reduce glare. Second, what controls glare is lamp design. Some lamps have a dip in a certain area of their beam pattern. A super wide, super sharp cutoff really has no bearing on glare control. What matters is limiting the light hitting that imaginary 2.5" by 1" box, and proper aim and design will help with that. A randomly aimed aftermarket lamp even with the sharpest cutoff is no guarantee of glare control, and oncoming drivers aren't scientific instruments you can use to judge glare.

Too sharp of a cutoff is also dangerous to night driving. There are minimum requirements for uplight--you need some light sent upward in a proper, legal, and safe headlamp beam to illuminate road signs.

Or here's another one, Driving said system for 10 years and never once hitting a deer or being flashed by another driver.

That's about as useful as a motorcyclist saying "I've been riding for 10 years without a helmet and never suffered any head injury."

And no, I'm not using a HID kit that was designed by a forum user, but an aftermarket system installed into my g8, which subsequent holden models came with HIDs.

Unless the aftermarket system was designed by GM/Holden, it is probably an abomination. I've tested way too many aftermarket headlamps and almost all of them failed even the most basic standards, such as being able to actually fit in the vehicle they were supposedly "designed" for.

http://www.capacertified.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/CAPALighting3.pdf

In the above test, the Depo (major aftermarket headlamp supplier) lamps didn't even fit correctly on a 2000-2003 Ford Taurus (hardly a rare vehicle). Imagine that--the people at Depo couldn't even design a headlamp that would correctly fit the vehicle. I can't imagine them getting the photometrics right. The fact of the matter is that they didn't get the photometrics correct.

In addition, I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to say. Your words are a little jumbled. But if you are trying to say that you installed Australian lights, and you are in the US, then you have completely wrong lights for your vehicle. Traffic directionality matters when it comes to headlamps. But I'm not clear about what exactly you mean.