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Home > Materials Light Transmission Testing
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Headlight Armor - Materials Testing
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Over the past several years there has been a dramatic
increase in demand for tinted headlight and taillight covers. Whether we are
talking about a show car, a race car or even your daily driver, the demand is
unmistakable. But this demand has brought a lot of shady vendors to the fore.
Caveat emptor is certainly the word of the day. Before we added our line of
colored lighting protection kits we bought kits from a wide variety of sources
and put them through the tests to see how they lived up to their billing.
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We bought from 'blindly paypal me the money' type people,
a variety of ebay sticker people, and several online shops. What did we find?
Not a single one came anywhere close to as was advertised! We used our tint meter (used to measure the light transmission
and legality of window tints) to verify light transmission claims. We measured
thickness with our caliper, and heat properties with a pyrometer. We tested
durability and temperature stability from freezing cold to hotter than blazes
Texas sun.
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'Overlays' - Every time we tested something that looked
like what we were looking for and was advertised as an overlay, what we got was
a piece of transparent sign making vinyl or window tint. 2-3mil thin and
delicate. Everyday copy paper is 4mil for comparison. We pressed one person for the film thickness and each time he came
back with 'it is 7 year vinyl' and no mention of its thinner than paper quality. When
we received the order, the directions said 'dunk the kit is a bucket of soapy water and
apply'... One was window tint designed for glass and impossible to get to lay
down on our test headlight. One didn't even have adhesive, it was (not) held on by static. While we were able to apply it,
it did blow off the first time we drove on the highway... The overlays we tested
were certainly a prime example of 'you got what you paid for', less really.
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Several sets of clear headlight protection kits we tested
we nothing more than paint protection film - clear bra material cut in the
shape of a headlight. While some of these did work, some didn't fit at all because
paint protection film likes to be stretched, not compressed like you need to do
to install some of the more complex headlight kits.
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Headlight Armor - Smoked Film Light Transmission
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We tested a variety of "Smoked Headlight Kits" from vendors who claim that their
covers both look really dark but allow 60%-95% light transmission. If you go to
the tint shop and ask for 80% window tint most won't have anything that light
to begin with. We did find a shop that had a display with 70% and you could
hardly tell it was tinted at all... We asked each vendor to verify their claims
before we placed our order. They said 'absolutely, tinted headlight covers are
measured differently'.
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We tested other suppliers items with our light transmission meter.
| Claimed Transmission % |
Tested Transmission % |
| 60% |
18% |
| 80% |
28% |
| 95% |
45% |
If you see a product that looks pretty dark chances are it is going
to block light transmission. We have not found a way to make a chrome headlight look
really dark black and yet have no effect on light output.
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Headlight Armor Smoked Lighting kits are available in three levels of tinting
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| Light Smoke |
50% |
| Standard Smoke |
30% |
| Dark Stealth Smoke |
20% |
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