TheSamba.com :: View topic - Pre-55 clear headlight lenses

Wed Jul 08, 2009 6:30 pm

here are the pics of my latest repro , clear "hella-vw" clear lenses for up to 1955 barndoors and bugs ...

more pics at my gallery

enjoy

Wed Jul 08, 2009 9:01 pm

Nice. Plastic or glass?

Thu Jul 09, 2009 12:07 am

hmm :twisted:

Thu Jul 09, 2009 3:01 am

GLASS , GLASS , GLASS , GLASS , GLASS , GLASS, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

remember , i do not offer low quality products . plastic is cheap and NOT original , remember that .

Thu Jul 09, 2009 5:21 am

price?

Thu Jul 09, 2009 1:22 pm

bubba wrote: price?

$165 each according to his ad.

Thu Jul 09, 2009 1:43 pm

Nice reproduction Ricardo.

I didn't put it together until now that the US spec. "barndoor" clear lenses are actually bug lenses turned on their side. I hadn't noticed the the elongated oval center (rather than a circular center) and the "top" lettering above the Hella logo.

This would explain why they are the only "barndoor" lenses with the VW logo.

BTW - Optical grade UV resistant clear plastic is not cheap. I'll bet VW would have switched to plastic headlight lenses in the 50's if they had an acceptable quality material for the headlight lenses. After all, they were using plastic lenses for the tail lights, signals, interior lights, etc. in the 50's.

Thu Jul 09, 2009 4:51 pm

I need to get me some of these ones...for my 52's

Thu Jul 09, 2009 5:08 pm

By what i can see it looks like there are some falws in that one..

Thu Jul 09, 2009 6:24 pm

cold molding , it needs to warm up enough to accept the molten glass ....otherwise flaws will show up .

vw and others used plastic in everything except headlights , i believe just to void excessive wear on plastic lenses from road debris .

also , plastic those days would have not been fully developed ...

just my thought

Thu Jul 09, 2009 6:55 pm

Im sure the flaws are from testing, so you see a "still warm" prototype
overall looks ok, and whatever flaws can be fixed

I personally like these ones I found

Thu Jul 09, 2009 7:08 pm

Ricardo, I thought your mold was cold as you can see some "cold wrinkles" just below the oval in both pictures. All headlight lenses I have ever seen have some sort of defect in them. Unless it is a glaring large void I wouldn't be concerned with "tiny" defect.

Fri Jul 10, 2009 11:35 am

splitpartsunlimited wrote: cold molding , it needs to warm up enough to accept the molten glass ....otherwise flaws will show up .
Thanks for the explanation. They look great to me so far.

Is the heat why the "oben" text looks a bit distorted too?

Original lens imprints (direct scan on scanner):
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/album_page.php?pic_id=574734

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/album_page.php?pic_id=574735

Sun Jul 12, 2009 2:54 pm

Is is possible for you to make these without the VW logo.. or is this a problem?. There are a lot of early Porsche guys also looking for this lens with the halo... for 55 and earlier 356 US cars.

See...

http://www.356registry.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=49868#49868

Sun Jul 12, 2009 5:02 pm

i can , but i would like to know how many porsche owners would be interested and money should be deposited up front ..........so far , no orders have been placed for pre 55 lenses , the 1st of 6th "easy" payment of 3k will have to be paid for the dies on next wed , and this really discourages me to keep investing my money in dead projects ....

Sun Jul 12, 2009 7:45 pm

I have a '54 Beetle with these lenses and one of them is the type with the VW emblem on the bottom and the Hella logo on top, the other one has just the smaller Hella logo on the bottom and just "oben" on top, no VW, as far as I know both of them are original to the car unless it is possible that one lens was broken when the car was almost new otherwise by late 1955 the "vestigial oval" type would not have been available as a new replacement, I'd probably trade the non VW lens to a Porsche guy in exchange for another VW one but mines probably not "perfect" enough ( the car was driven on the ALPCAN highway in 1956 so theres a lot of small gravel chips in both lenses ) The new ones are very tempting but the VW emblem on the repro is a bit off as you can see from Everetts photo above, the emblem on the real ones is pretty odd looking, has a huge gap between the letters and the circle around it and the oval looks a bit too pronounced, mold just needs a bit of fine tuning, very close though, I'm tempted to get a pair in order to get dibs on the single rivet rings !

Oh and about the quality of plastic headlight lenses, even VW still hasn't figured out how to make clear plastic last, a huge amount of 1999-2005 Jetta headlights are badly fogged up at this point, I'm not sure if its some kind of reaction to car wash chemicals or some sort of environmental buildup, they haze up till they look like milk glass, its possible to polish them back down with more chemicals and abrasives but there are a lot of Jetta drivers ignorant to having seriously reduced nightime visability

Wed Sep 23, 2009 2:53 pm

Well , production is finished , no wrinkles at all .....check the pics ....

Wed Sep 23, 2009 6:23 pm

WOW looking better....