Mark
You are correct, the optics of the lens is of major importance.
Many of today's plastic lens headlights turn yellow or craze to the point
the headlights are worthless. If the light is not focused, you see very
little.
You treat the plastic lens just like polishing paint. Sometimes you
need to wet sand then polish the plastic lens.
I've seen a number of new cars that have bubble levels on the
headlight assemblies that make aiming them fairly easy. Personally I like
to find a dark parking lot to aim my headlights out without blasting into a
car in front of me and to the center and right of my lane to see the
critters in the bushes. I also have a tool for the headlight adjustment in
my glove box and I keep the adjuster screws lubed so they can be adjusted if
needed.
The factory set up can usually be duplicated on any flat surface and wall.
The specs are available in the service manual.
You adjust them to a target a certain distance and height from the
headlights.
One vehicle I had needed several headlight adjustments which seem
odd to me until I saw the vehicle on a flat surface. The vehicle was not
sitting level. I later found that both rear springs had cracked. Once I
replace the springs I had to adjust the headlights back.
Ron Fraser
-----Original Message-----
From: tigers-bounces@autox.team.net [mailto:tigers-bounces@autox.team.net]
On Behalf Of CoolVT@aol.com
Sent: Monday, February 06, 2012 11:48 AM
To: tigers@autox.team.net
Subject: [Tigers] Headlights-Non tiger
I like the idea of Tigers having sealed beams. My experience with
non-sealed beams is that the power of the bulb doesn't matter as much as the
optic
design of the plastic lens...and I think they are all plastic now. The
large Fords ..ie...LTD's, Mercury Marquis etc. were horrible. I had
occasion
to ride with cops in LTD's and they had their high beams on in the city as
much as possible. Later I owned a Merc. Marquis and it was the same
thing...... horrible. I had the lights re-aimed to factory specs and still
horrible. I tried 100W high beams and no improvement. At the same time my
Volvo
240 had the best factory lights (55W) that I have ever seen. Maybe it has
something to do with the 240 and it's lens being almost flat in front of
the
bulb. It must be one major task for the factory to get light to focus
with the swooping shape of today's headlights.
Mark L
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