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  #21  
Old 03-06-2010, 09:12 AM
Sandy G Sandy G is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by merrylander View Post
Only one thing you missed Sandy, now the gummint lets the manufacturers approve their own lights, that's why the new ones are so lousy.
What gets me is what asinine, silly, & idiotic shapes the design dweebs think the headlites gotta have...Every one of 'em guys must wear those silly-arsed glasses that are only 3/4" wide, & have the foot-thick sidepieces...The ones that look like safety glasses on acid or something.
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  #22  
Old 03-06-2010, 10:04 AM
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That's because some idiot got the idea that optics is an art form and not a science.
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  #23  
Old 03-06-2010, 10:26 AM
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merrylander merrylander is offline
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Aparently cars these days have an event recorder similar to the airplane black box (hope it does not record the cockpit coversation, or GM will learn some new words about my fellow Maryland drivers). Seems Toyota's has a proprietary coding and they do not want to reveal whatever they have found. They have forgotten one simple rule - when you are in a hole stop digging. Could not happen to a more deserving lot.

It seems that seppuku has been replaced by bawling in public and saying "Oh so sorry".
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Last edited by merrylander; 03-06-2010 at 10:45 AM.
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  #24  
Old 03-06-2010, 11:13 AM
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Boreas Boreas is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by merrylander View Post
That's because some idiot got the idea that optics is an art form and not a science.
These fancy headlights were indeed nose candy for designers but they have a practical aspect to them. Faring and sculpting them into the overall body design has an aerodynamic advantage which shows up in fuel savings. European manufacturers, particularly the Germans, had been doing this for a while but had to refit their cars with US legal lighting to bring them in.

At that time we had specs for lighting that were written by GE. Not surprisingly, the specs mandated the lights that US cars be equipped with were the types of headlights GE was already making. That's why everything had one of the two types of round or the two types of rectangular headlights.

Another thing was a mandatory minimum and maximum height above the roadway. It was high enough that it proved impossible to integrate the lights into the body design and still have a graceful and aerodynamic shape. Some manufacturers went to pop-up headlights like the Miata or Corvette to get around this problem. Others, like MG and Jaguar just jacked the whole car up on its suspension until the headlights were high enough.

John

Last edited by Boreas; 03-06-2010 at 11:23 AM.
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  #25  
Old 03-06-2010, 11:20 AM
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The problem is that to design a decent headlamp it needs to be round, about 8 inches in diameter with a parabolic reflector and an H4 halogen bulb. Those 9000 series bulbs suck and the high discharge ones blind everything coming toward them.
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  #26  
Old 03-06-2010, 12:21 PM
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BlueStreak BlueStreak is offline
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I worked as a mechanic and process technician in an automotive headlamp manufacturing facility for twelve years. We made both the old 2E1/2A1 standardized lamps and the "aero" type lamps from 1991 to 2003. Manufacturing those "aero" lamps, with all of their weird compound curves and maintaining decent optometrics was a bitch to say the least. That and getting a good seal around the periphery of the lens/housings to prevent water intrusion. Ever seen one of those things with water sloshing around inside it? Bad weld, bad fit, bad vent or maybe a gap/bubble in the glue. And then after a few years, the hardcoat fogs up. So you "polish" the fog away, which leaves the polycarbonate lens exposed directly to the elements. Six months later, you're replacing the lamps, at $180-$400 .

But, some of them do look really cool.

I hate the high discharge (Xenon) bulbs. They work really good, if you're inside looking out. But they blind any oncoming traffic. I was there when we were testing the first ones
before they hit the market.

Anyhow, the dumbasses that ran the company went on a big exspansion kick. Bought a brake company that had $3 billion in asbestos liabilities. Within a year, they were bankrupt. They sold the business, and our jobs to a Canadian company, who moved the equipment and the contracts to a union plant in Canada. Why? Because in Canada the company doesn't have to pay for EMPLOYEE HEALTH COVERAGE. It's TOO expensive, they said, to do the work in the U.S. because of the way we do HEALTHCARE.

Regards,
Dave
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Last edited by BlueStreak; 03-06-2010 at 12:25 PM.
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  #27  
Old 03-08-2010, 09:43 AM
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piece-itpete piece-itpete is offline
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Quote:
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Boy, howdy!!!

What we need is more gubbmitt regulators, sittin' on their asses in some office, feet on OUR desk, sendin' IOC's to more gubbmitt regulators, tellin' us ignert podunks how to run our business, else they take the Hammer of Thor and beat our pocketbooks empty, and hire more regulators to show us nitwits the error of our ways. At the rate of $10 for me, and $10 for you...and if you don't like it, we got free room and board for you hard cases who can't make the connection.

How am I doin', Sandy?

Chas
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BlueStreak View Post
BTW, isn't the weeping Mr. Toyoda suppose to gut himself now, or something?
I'm still awaiting.

About headlights, I caught this on lincolnsonline:

"..... Decisions get made all the time based on factors that have nothing to do with lighting performance. Often they're more political or philosophical than technical. The various bean counters, stylists, and many other non-engineering departments all get strong voices in whatever project is at hand. Even external forces weigh in heavily; a good present-day example is the Consumer Reports headlight tests -- they are based on one particular company's philosophy of what makes a good headlamp, because that is the company Consumers Union commissioned for a test protocol.

It so happens that company sank like an anvil dropped off a building after it was spun off by GM (after being GM's internal lighting supplier for many years)...nobody wanted to buy their lighting, because it was all hopelessly out of date and well behind the leading edge in terms of performance. Nevertheless, that's the company that designed the CR headlight test, and naturally that test favors lights performing according to the philosophy of that company, and so we have a test that gives bad grades to lamps acclaimed for their high performance elsewhere in the world, and good grades to lamps panned for their poor performance elsewhere in the world. CR ratings are considered very important by most automakers selling in the North American market, and so the commercially-unsuccessful lighting philosophy of a defunct company is now a major design target for this entire market.
...."

Isn't that last line Dilbert-like on a grand scale?

Pete
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  #28  
Old 03-08-2010, 10:02 AM
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BlueStreak BlueStreak is offline
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They're talking about Guide, I worked for Federal-Mogul. And yes, the auto industry is very Dilbert-like. And I'm talking about upper management, here. You've never seen a bigger lot of absolute nincompoops, Pete. My favorite one was when they started complaining about "mechanical downtime and it's effect on production line performance". So, they assemble a committee, hold weekly meetings for two months and come out with a brilliant idea----"From now on, mechanical downtime will no longer be counted as actual downtime." Dilbert.

Dave
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  #29  
Old 03-08-2010, 10:38 AM
Sandy G Sandy G is offline
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Sounds like some of the shyte WE pulled back in the Eighties when we were part of Dennison. Remember back then the Buzz of the Week was PRODUCTIVITY, we had to sit around & come up w/productivity improvements. One of their engineers had bought this HUGE Babcox & Wilcox boiler, gotten a best-friend/1st cousin/racehorse type deal on the damthing...One little problem, tho-They had absolutely no use whatsoever for it. So the engineers started scurrying for an out-in-the-hinterlands place to hide/lose this huge white elephant-Actually, it was Insane-Asylum Green-And our plant in Rogersville, TN, was about as far out in Der Boonies as you could get from Framingham, People's Republic of Taxachusetts...Well, we went around, re-did all our plumbing & changed a few things around, built a new-purpose built "Boiler House" for this mighty gizmotron from our Great White Fathers Up North...and found out, what with the upgraded plumbing, fixing a few problems like we did, so on & so forth, WE didn't need th' damthing, neither....But there it was, so it got installed in its spankin' new Boiler Haus. Other than a couple of brief trial runs to see if they'd hooked it up right, I don't think it ever ran. But we DID put in for Productivity Improvements of $5K a month for NOT running the boiler...Just don't say anything about it not being needed in the first place...Or the approx $750K Dennison spent buying it, sending it down to Tennessee, building Der Haus, new plumbing, engineering time....An' they let ME go for having "The Economist" on my desk, 'cause it wasn't "Printing Related"....
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  #30  
Old 03-08-2010, 10:39 AM
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merrylander merrylander is offline
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I had a set of German H4 halogens in the Probe that I had, beautiful lamps, even on low they sent a beam a mile down the road yet never illuminated the car in fron above the trunk line. Of course I kept them properly adjusted.

While I applaud the auto industry for employing the visually handicapped I really don't believe they should be aligning headlights.
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