Repairing Your Headlights

How do we repair or restore the headlights on our cars? According to the New York Police Traffic Division's Traffic Safety Team:

Clean the headlights or have them professionally restored and repaired (our department uses the MDWholesale headlight restoration kit on all our police cruisers and department vehicles for maximum light output and safety. Dirty headlights can and will decrease visibility by as much as 90%.)

Up until now the only solutions were to either replace the cloudy lenses with expensive OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) parts at your local dealer (headlights can easily cost over $300 each) or to just take the risk and drive with the bad headlights. Now there is an alternative, headlight restoration. You can restore these cloudy headlights to like new condition and be safe again. Restored headlights look new and have the same light output and safety of new headlights for a fraction of the cost. There is a patented headlight restoration system manufactured by MDWholesale which has been determined very effective in increasing night time safety by numerous government agencies and police departments throughout the nation. Please see below link for more information on this headlight restoration system.

So it is a proven fact that worn and cloudy headlights will have a great effect on night time driving and safety. Therefore, headlight restoration is a economic and very effective alternative to headlight replacement.

Drive Safer With Headlight Restoration

If you have cloudy or worn and yellow headlights you are taking a big and unnecessary risk when you drive at night. According to the AAA Foundation For Traffic Safety: An average of 9 out of every 10 cars on the road today has dirty or yellowed headlights that greatly reduce vision and need to be replaced, repaired or restored.

Most people do not know that not only do worn or cloudy headlights look bad, but they also reduce light output by as much as 95 percent. That is a huge difference in whether you can effectively see or be seen when driving at night.

In a recent search on Google and Yahoo search engines, it was found that thousands of accidents were linked to ineffective light output due to worn and cloudy headlights. The majority of headlight lenses produced today are made of plastic and are very susceptible to road and weather conditions. Harsh UV rays in hot climates, chemicals from the engine and fumes, smog, etc. all take a toll on the plastic and cause it to breakdown from the outside in. The resulting cloudiness is like cancer and quickly gets worse. Soon reducing visibility and making your vehicle unsafe at night.

Accidents caused by reduced light output and bad or cloudy headlights tend to also be much more severe. According to the National Institute For Highway Safety: Accidents at night due to a more limited visibility are usually of a more severe nature, but when equipped with ineffective headlights the chances for a more severe accident are far greater.

Save Money on Auto Repair!

Getting an auto repaired is nothing less than a headache. With costly replacement and repair of the auto parts, one tends to search a cheaper alternative as a part of an affordable auto repair and replacement service that provides quality repair job at competitive price.

Most of the auto repair firms advertise for repairing and replacing auto vehicle at very less rates, nevertheless they do this through employing the unskilled workers and making use of inferior quality parts. Usually, the specialized shops including the old car replacement and transmission repair shops, provide, cheaper auto replacement and repairs in comparison to the general repair shops.

It is inspiring that you talk about the exact and correct nature of the repair job and spend some time with the auto mechanic prior really starting on the replacement or repair. Many of the modern auto vehicles have the computerized monitoring system that assists the mechanics in identifying the problems simply and easily. The auto repair guides and manuals tell you all the details of every repair job as well as the normal time involved in each repair. These guides and manuals can be purchased from the auto parts shops accessible in your neighborhood.

Windshield Repair

Proper windshield repair is very important for any vehicle to ensure the integrity of the car glass and to prevent untimely and costly windshield replacement.

The car glass used for windshield repair is laminated glass. Two sheets of special composite car glass are fused together by a laminate of vinyl plastic between them. The laminate is very strong and not only holds the two sheets of car glass together while they are intact but also keeps them stuck even upon shattering. The fragments of car glass remain held together like a web instead of dangerously flying toward the car driver and passengers.

The windshield is held in place by the urethane molding, which glues it to the car, and the frit, which is the black frame that protects the urethane molding from being melted by ultraviolet rays.

The most obvious role of the windshield is to protect the car’s occupants from the wind, rain and airborne debris, thereby allowing a clear and unencumbered view of the road. Less obvious is the role of the windshield in providing safety during accidents. In head on collisions, the windshield ensures that the airbag works properly by preventing it being inflated outwards. In case the car rolls over, the windshield provides the necessary support to prevent the roof from collapsing.

Do a Frame Off or a Frame On?

A Frame Off restoration is a full "Factory New" restoration while a Frame On restoration is one that leaves the body on the car and selectively restores the components needed to bring the car into good working conditions. There are benefits and drawbacks to each option.
A Frame Off restoration takes the longest amount of time to do and costs the most. On the other hand, while a Frame On project allows you to take some shortcuts that will save you time and money, you could also end up overlooking areas of the car that need to be repaired and are only discovered after the car has been restored. However, despite this, unless you want a Show Car or want to spend the time doing a complete overhaul, a Frame On restoration will most probably serve you best.

Purity vs Safety

An issue that we have already mentioned a few times is the upgrading of the safety features of a classic car. Driving conditions were much different back when the car was first put on the market and many of the mechanical systems those cars came with cannot adequately cope with today's current driving conditions. However, updating the safety systems in your classic car will detract from its purity. It may seem like something of a conundrum, but in actuality, it is very simple. If you plan on taking the car out on the road, especially a busy city street, then upgrading the car's brakes and adding seat belts will not only keep you safe, but also helps keep others safe.

While brakes are easy to manage, seat belts might be more of a challenge. Up until the sixties, very few cars came equipped with seat belts as standard. Therefore, if your car did not come with seatbelts, you'll need to install them. If you car did come with seatbelts, then it goes without saying that if they're in disrepair you'll need to replace them with an authentic factory original.

Modern Techniques in Auto Body Repair

100% Auto Paint Match

Whether your car needs whole auto body painting, spot painting for covering dents, graphics removal, or others, the new paint should match the original car paint 100%. To achieve this, photo spectrometer is used to analyze the original paint of your vehicle. Then, a computerized auto paint color match system is employed to find the true color that will match the original color of your car. After this, the painting is done carefully to achieve a seamless finish. Once the paint has dried, your car will surely look like it's just freshly taken from a showroom.

Paintless Dent Repair (PDR)

Dents are commonly caused by impacts when your vehicle comes in contact with other cars or other hard surfaces. And the problem is, dents can sometimes occur at or near the angular or curve surfaces of the car, in which case they are very noticeable and harder to repair. Today, paintless dent removal method is already in use to solve these problems. Special tools are used to press, knead, or rub down on the affected part until it is back to its normal shape. This should be done while ensuring that the paint does not get damaged. And for those dents on hard-to-reach areas such as the edge of the car's floor, fill and spray methods are used.

Body Frame Straightening

For cars that experienced collision with another vehicle or object big enough to cause a longitudinal or lateral damage on the car's frame, body frame straightening is required. A computerized tool is used in this process. An ultrasound technology measures the discrepancy of the frame alignment and then a laser is used to accurately align the frame back to its original shape.