I am now reassembling my car after it's recent re-spray (its amazing how
bad all the old stuff looks after the car gets repainted :-}) and since I
was re-doing the matt-black rear treatment as original on the early MK4's I
had to remove the rear light clusters for the first time in the 29 years
since I've owned the car. Now they were in remarkably good shape for being
that old, just some very minor pitting and the rubber seals were quite
intact and usable (another example of the superiority of the "old rubber"
the new stuff seams to degrade within a few years, but anyway I digress)
The lenses, besides being fairly dusty were in great shape and cleaned up
nicely. The really interesting item though was in these assemblies (for
mine anyway) for the turn signal and the tail/stop lamps there were
"pressed in" plastic reflectors which, through the ravages of time, had
lost all their reflective abilities. The chrome, or what was left of it
(looked more like silver paint), was severely faded almost to the point of
not being there and in some areas the original plastic was showing through.
Now I could have simply painted a reflective surface back on but two
things mads me decide otherwise. Firstly the whole metal part of the
assembly is chromed including the pockets that the reflectors fit in and
these, aside from some minor pitting, were in great shape. Secondly the
plastic on the running lamp reflectors, apparently from the heat of
continued use (I usually have my lights on when gong to work every
morning), had melted the reflectors around the *lamp base* area and didn't
look too good. So I just polished up the chrome pockets and left the
reflectors out.
What a difference! Brightest 1156 tail lamps this car has probably had
since new! Now I realize that the cleaning helped somewhat, but the biggest
result I am sure came from the removal of the degraded reflectors. Now I'm
not entirely sure why these are installed (looks like a recipe for eventual
failure. Painted [definitely not chromed] plastic right next to a hot
bulb) But maybe it was some US regulation regarding rear light
illumination and how it was reflected back in 1972, but the chromed
pockets, while probably not ideally shaped for optimum light focusing,
certainly don't look all that bad to me - and more viable lighting is
certainly better in my book -
Anyway, if your rear lights just don't seem so bright any more it might be
worth a look at the reflectors that are installed in the clusters. They
just might look like mine did - and its a relatively easy fix!
Barry Schwartz (San Diego) bschwart@pacbell.net
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