Wisest compromise with a Taurusu

Hello,
I have been lurking here for some time. Since October of 2011 to be precise and many times since then I have come to this forum for a reality-refresher when I'm tempted to do something I know I shouldn't. There are a couple of members specifically who's knowledge of facts vs. unmitigated nonsense has helped me heaps in the last couple of years. I love maintaining my vehicles, am a detailing enthusiast and have been fascinated with lighting for many years. I could ramble on but I'll get to my question I married into a 1997 Ford Taurus with very degraded headlamps. On a trip home at night in the rain once when we were still dating, I told my wife that I couldn't believe she had survived driving this car all these years, I felt so handicapped I was getting nervous and upset by the intolerable visibility and very worried that she was trusting her life to these useless lights! We've been on a pretty tight budget and over the last year or so I've made a few attempts at improving the situation in incremental stages. From my detailing background, I started by polishing the lenses, which I have been learning on this forum and observing first hand is anything but a permanent fix. I did my best to adjust the aim according to the owner's manual and this helped a tiny bit. After polishing through the opaque film I found that the lenses were also completely saturated with little cracks and the reflector surfaces were cracked up like dried mud and would fill with condensation! Debating the best next step within our budget and doing some research, I ended up ordering a custom harness from Susquehanna Motorsports. My reasoning was that this would let me keep the original build quality of the lamp housings (resisted temptation to buy aftermarket replacements after reading many threads on this forum), it would improve power a bit without any dodgey or illegal alterations and we just couldn't afford the price the Ford dealer gave me for new OEM housings. This was a big improvement and got us by for over a year. Many more pressing repairs and obligations have kept me from the lights for a while but we finally had a couple hundred dollars this fall and again - I was very tempted by the very identical looking aftermarket replacements. I sucked it up and found a pair of Ford headlamps at the local salvage yard which were hazed, but had no other damage, they were much better than mine. I decided polishing a used pair of REAL headlamps was better than buying fake junk and regretting it later, or having them degrade even faster and not keep the elements out. They turned out very clear and the reflectors are in immaculate looking shape, but alas, my compromise was in polishing those lenses. I know they won't last. My question is, until I can get new Ford headlights, is routinely polishing my lenses an acceptable stopgap measure here? I sincerely meant to reach the best possible results on a very limited budget and I really didn't want to go through another winter with fog inside my lights.

I'm sorry for the title typo, I meant Taurus, not Taurusu. I need to add that I'm aware that "did my best" to aim my headlamps isn't going to earn me much credibility here as someone who's even tried to do this right. In the past I did the 25 feet from a wall with a half tank of gas and make marks with masking tape and a tape measure method for aiming lights. I learned it in a Chilton's manual for a different car and never thought about it after that. That's what I did when I "did my best" as well as trying to use the levels on the housings. I've asked the Ford dealership for a professional aiming and they said they just "do their best" there as well and it didn't seem worth it if they were just going to fiddle them with no guarantee of anything. I need to look around for a shop that has the proper equipment for aiming my lights right and any tips on that would help. I also should clarify my question a little. Has what I've done been as beneficial in reality as it has "seemed" to me or did I just waste money I could have been saving for OEM housings? I understand subjective impressions of headlight performance aren't scientific or accurate, but I really felt like I COULDN'T SEE before and have tried to remedy that without endangering anyone or totally wasting our money.

Well, I reckon you've done about the best you can on a limited budget. Lights with reflectors in good shape, clean lenses and decent power supply to quality bulbs is going to give you a lot more light than what you had. Will your lens polishing work? No, not long term, but you know about that and as long as you are prepared to redo the polishing regularly then all credit to you.

ilovecnidarians said:

I need to add that I'm aware that "did my best" to aim my headlamps isn't going to earn me much credibility here as someone who's even tried to do this right.

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The thing that undoes the "did [your] best" is the location-- is the floor the vehicle is parked on completely level? Other than that, doing the tape marks on the wall thing may not be the most precise, but it does help identify and correct severe aim aberrations. Not quite as good as the optical beamsetter, but better than just cranking on them without any referent.

I've asked the Ford dealership for a professional aiming and they said they just "do their best" there as well and it didn't seem worth it if they were just going to fiddle them with no guarantee of anything.

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Sounds like they need an optical beamsetter. It could pay for itself eventually if they advertise the service properly-- maybe bundle it in with a wheel alignment. Getting an alignment? Don't just align the wheels for better handling and mileage, get your headlamps aimed for safer night driving!

I need to look around for a shop that has the proper equipment for aiming my lights right and any tips on that would help.

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Try a VW dealership. They may (or *should*) have an optical beamsetter.

I also should clarify my question a little. Has what I've done been as beneficial in reality as it has "seemed" to me or did I just waste money I could have been saving for OEM housings?

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If you can tell a huge difference in the lenses and reflectors of the junkyard parts vs your factory original parts, you've already done pretty well if you got them cheap enough. The continued polishing and repolishing may start to wear the lenses thin enough to start to weaken them, though-- and the yellowing will accelerate. Park in the shade whenever possible!

All efforts to polish/restore headlamp lenses will give temporary results, but the Sylvania-branded headlamp lens restoration kit seems to be emerging as the one that gives the longest-lasting effect. I haven't yet looked at the Philips kit, though.

What bulbs are you running?

I used a concrete pad in a large shop building, most level place I could find to park my car. Lowered the bay door and turned off the lights while using the measure-and-tape method.

14 months ago I was turned onto the Sylvania brand restoration kit. I noticed it at a parts store and looked it up. Read a comparison of several kits on Consumer Reports that pointed out how they were the only one which included a sealant after the correction. I uninstalled the housings and performed the correction per the instructions indoors, allowing the sealant to fully cure before re-installing the housings two days later. It did do a much better job than anything I'd used before, the outside lenses stayed clear until May of this year. This summer, they deteriorated rapidly. (I only hand wash my car with quality product, I assume this helps preserve the sealant vs. aggressive detergents and automated brushes/high pressure water nozzles) What really prompted me to replace those housings instead of re-polish them was that even perfectly polished, they were badly degraded on the inside. There was spotty film deposit from the moisture that builds up inside during the winter, the lenses had "hairlike" fissures all over them and the reflector of the right-hand housing was all cracked up. These that I just found at the junk yard polished to a "like new" appearance with no visible lens artifacts or internal contamination. But because the previous lenses went downhill so fast after a year, I decided another Sylvania kit might not be worth it and restored these with hand sanding, a foam pad on a DA power tool and Meguiar's PlastX. I guess I reasoned that since the sealant was so temporary, why bother? I admit it did outperform any PlastX resto I've done in the past but it took a LOT more time

As for the bulbs I'm running, they are the bulbs that were in the car when my wife got it. I don't know if they're stock, but they are Sylvania brand and are not any of the "upgrade" kind like silverstar. I've been tempted to get some Philips Xtreme power lamps and almost ordered them a few times, but I could never bring myself to because the right housing lets in moisture and I thought I'd be wasting them. When I put the "new" lamps in, they also had basic Sylvanias and I used those as they were less contaminated looking than my old ones.

Old bulbs = dim light. Buy a pair of these or these as soon as you can.

That makes sense, will do! Thanks for the link, too, the local store sells the GE lamps for twice that much.

Bought the Philips lamps a few months ago, noticeable improvement. I also used Meguiars headlight sealant in October and the lenses still look great. We'll see how they look after a summer in the sun...

You will get another very large improvement if you install relays.

-Virgil- said:

You will get another very large improvement if you install relays.

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ilovecnidarians said:

I ended up ordering a custom harness from Susquehanna Motorsports.

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I think he did.

The only thing I can really suggest is trying to look again for the OEM parts-- maybe another year has made them a little cheaper (or, they got more expensive due to relative rarity). Buy the driver's side one if you can only afford one, then in 3-5 months get the passenger side one. This spreads out the outlay and will give you noticeable improvement immediately (my reasoning being it's the lamp you're right behind, and it's also the lamp closer to oncoming traffic so a clear lens means better glare control). Or, buy the passenger side one since that's the one that lets in moisture (or perhaps that one doesn't let moisture OUT: You might just need to check the vent tubes for clogging).

I like the idea of buying one at a time, I think I will. The housings don't let in moisture anymore, they are a pair of OE housings from the junk yard that were in better shape than my old ones. The originals had cracked and blackened reflectors and crazed lenses, these had only moderate clouding of the lenses. Using the restoration polish and sealant made them look almost new and they still do but I don't doubt that brand new ones will change my mind about how good these seem.
I do have relays, it was my very first alteration. It was built by Susquehanna Motor sports and it uses Hella relays. I've had issues with intermittent failures with the relays.

After pouring over threads in this section for the past day and a half, I'm left with the impression that my own perception of how well my headlamps work and how well I see is not trustworthy. I know that this car was very uncomfortable and at times highly stressful/frightening to drive at night and now it isn't. As long as my equipment is legal, OEM and properly installed and used, is that about the only way for a layman to confidently say, "my headlamps are good"?

The harness build-up work from Susquehanna is good. I don't like Hella relays, though; they don't seem to hold up for me. You will probably stop having relay failures if you change to another brand (Potter & Brumsfeld/P&B, Tyco-Bosch, Flosser). It shouldn't be hard to get a direct plug-in replacement in one of those brands.

As for assessing your headlamps: at the top of your otherwise complete list I would add "properly aimed". However much effort it takes you to find a shop that has an optical headlamp aiming machine and uses it properly, it's worth it in terms of safety benefits at night.