Seeing the lights...

I did another of my time shifting ideas today. As previously mentioned, my plan is to change all the lights and I thought the best time to do so was during the reassembly phase, once all the painting is completed. The easiest way is to just bring the new light fixtures to the shop and have the mechanics install them. But my new set did not include bulbs, so it occurred to me to gather all the old fixtures, check the bulbs, and reuse whatever was still good. Reusing the bulbs was always part of the plan because the large number required would unnecessarily add to expenses. The front headlight system alone uses 6 H1 halogens and its another 14 regular bulbs for the rest of the car. And so I went to the paint shop to collect the old units for stripping and to more closely check on their condition. Now that they have been removed, I can have a better gauge of what can be done with them afterwards; either to trash, refurbish, or sell.

What I found out was that 3 of the 4 tailights are cracked and therefore trash. Same with the pair of front foglamps and pair of side markers. Both front signal lights and one of the tailights will have some resale value after a bit of cleaning up. For the right price, there will be a market as they are some of the most prone to replacement and are BMW original equipment.

The big surprise of the lot was that the headlights were very much salvageable. While mounted, it looked to me like one or two of the glass lenses were cracked and the chrome rings badly rusted. But once removed, I could see that what I thought were cracks were actually hardened tar or gum streaks and what seemed like rust was just a build up of caked dirt over the years. Needless to say, everything was very dirty with slightest contact immediately blackening my hands. This is how it looked before treatment:

Notice how dirty the whole assembly was and the chrome rings had no shine at all. About 2 hours later: after a soap and water wash/applying WD40 as a stain removing solvent/wet sanding with 1200 grit sandpaper/and even more rubbing with a metal polish, the result was this:



I wish I had taken a few more detailed pictures of the "before" phase but got discouraged from doing so because of my dirty hands. It looked like neither an engine nor underbody wash was done in a long time and frankly speaking, I did not expect the results to be very positive. My only thought at the start was to wipe down the lens but when the underlying finish started to appear, I was motivated to go on and restore the whole thing.

Now that they look so good, I have decided that I will keep them as my headlight set. After all, they are the original Hellas and really are the best lights that money can buy for the car. New ones would break the budget and that is why I worked hard to give them a chance. However, this unexpected development has given rise to a good kind of problem. The "smileys" which I bought earlier, will be up for sale after I complete this project and demand should be good since they are not easy to find locally.

Lights on...