Okay, I thought the normal beams were dim. The lead guy at the oil-change place laughed when he checked them. His trainee looked puzzled and said, "What?"
"That lady's headlights are out."
I've been driving with only the running lights working (unless I had the high beams on), which explains why they were so pitiful. Oh, they're kind of white, and they do light the road some, which works okay if there are streetlights -- but it means oncoming headlights are dazzling in comparison. And they live in the same twin-bulb fixture as the actual headlights, so if you look at them during the day, they do light up, they just look like lousy lights.
They're okay now. The drive home tonight was a lot better than any since it started getting dark early.
Changing the bulbs was as dusty-dirty as I expected, and they had three men on the job. It would have taken me four times as long, if not longer, so I'm resigned to the additional cost. And I got the oil changed at the same time, so it counts as a win.
Bonus, sort of: they slapped a battery analyzer on it, just in case, and my battery could be happier than it is. They don't sell 'em but they suggested I might want to shop around before too long.
It's a wonder that oncoming car drivers have not been flashing their brights at you. Of course, I'm not sure that I would notice if it were me. However, my headlights come on each time I draw my car into the garage so I might notice if they weren't as bright as expected - or not.
ReplyDeleteTo my eye, it just looked like the headlights were dim, and to the extent that oncoming drivers noticed, they probably thought the same thing. Even the new guy at the oil-change place thought so. But his colleague was right: my main low-beams were out. The difference driving home was remarkable.
ReplyDeleteThey sell LED replacements (apparently with built-in cooling fans!) but the originals were HID bulbs, some of which do have a short fade near the end of their life. This was an issue with some rear-screen projectors; at work, we ran one that was over 12 feet in the longest dimension, on a well-lit News set, and when the lamp started to go (at very infrequent intervals), things would get weird until someone remembered the last time it happened. The big bulbs were expensive but we found it worth our while to keep a replacement in stock, in the shelf next to the projector. (Those lovely big video walls you see on TV are a PITA -- chroma-key paint scuffs and fades, and it has to be evenly lit without colored-light "bounce" onto talent; multi-monitor video walls have alignment, colorimetery, matching and drive issues, depending on the technology; and rear projectors are bulky, a little noisy and occasionally fail abruptly, even dramatically. Throw distance for the last is about the same as the diagonal dimension of the screen, which is a big box to build into the set.)
You are far beyond my experience, Roberta. All I know is that projection bulbs were hot - back in the 50s when I was on our high school's projection staff to run projectors for teachers showing "movies" in class.
ReplyDeleteA helpful young man saw me struggling to replace a dead headlight in the local Wally World parking lot. I gratefully accepted his offer. He eventually gave up. Drove my one-eyed car home where I could curse loudly and often, leading to success. WTH are they teaching engineers nowadays?
ReplyDeleteHeadlights with cooling fans. Wow. Next, you're going tell us we can make long distance phone calls without an operator!
The road was getting dimmer and dimmer until I heeded one of those late-night TV ads and bought a kit to resurface the plastic headlight covers. Huh. It actually worked for a few years. The biggest enlightenment was cataract surgery. Highly recommended.