SHAME WITH LUMAX OE LAMPS ON MY 2009 Scorpio!
Last week, one evening it was rainy here and while parking the SUV at home, I noticed water vapour condensed on the inside of the front left headlight, seal beam lens. The right seal beam lens was quite OK and clear.
Fellow teambhpians immediately told me to check up the headlight for any crack.
I had clicked the pictures at dusk. The next morning, while carefully seeing the headlight, I found a hairline crack-like line on its upper part- now marked the crack within the ellipsoid and between the two parallel lines.
There was however no impact or hit of any kind anywhere. Even my parking is secure in the garage at home. At office the SUV is parked in a safe parking place too!
Again later on, I inspected the headlamp of my Brute SUV. That was designer’s devil and looked like a hairline crack. On viewing the right hand headlamp, a similar hairline design is seen exactly similar in its outline to the one on the left.
The moisture had come in through some other source for sure. The only place for that to come inside is from the bulb holder-seal beam gap, I later found.
As a fellow teambhpian then said “Not with the headlamps, but this happened to my fog lights, in July, when we drove through water, and there is moisture in there till now”. One Scorpio owner said that he had to replace the fog lights that got spoilt due to water entry within after a rainy drive.Naturally, the reflector takes the beating and corrodes.
The maker of these lamps is Lumax and I am sure Lumax makes lamps for many other brands as OE. So the problem may not be Scorpio specific.
Recently only last week, in the rainy weather, I drove through more than knee deep water logged roads.
As the Scorpio was parked in the garage for the whole day, last Saturday, I detached the headlight bulb along with the rubber bush. The headlight was allowed to naturally dry-it looked like it had dried finally! But that was far away from the truth. There is still enough water inside that’s floating at the base and condensing on the inside of the lens.
But now for applicability of Murphy's Laws'
-If any problem leads to solutions, instantly other problems crop up!
-Things are not as simple as they seem to be!
To my dismay likewise, I found the two fog lamps also moisture filled.
On Sunday, I tried to apply the same therapy for both the fog lamps too. After detaching the bulbs and the rubber bushes I found at least 20 ml of water within each fog lamp. Rather than using the dryer, I used dry cotton to rub the insides of the fog lamps to extract the maximum amount of water floating near the base of the reflector. The same water was condensing and forming water vapour on the inside of the lens.
Mahindra is reaching the US shores with its Scorpio Getaway pick-up. They also intend to sell these SUV’s in many other markets. Legal disputes and compensation issues may come up in the US courts, should some such shoddy lamps become the causative factor for a mishap or more.
In our country, the Scorpio has worked hard for 7-8 years, endeared itself and earned brownie points both in the workhorse and comfort departments. It is the best-selling SUV in its class.
Mahindra is leaving no gaps of any kind by constantly improving the Scorpio and is attending to every shortcoming or feedback.
Now with such low quality, shoddy and watery Lumax lamps as OE, I am sure Mahindra will earn brickbats for no fault on its part.
I only hope Mahindra will warn Lumax to improve the quality of its lamps or else part ways to rope in another reputed supplier, if need be from a western country, to keep up its quality.
It’s a shame that Lumax makes such lamps. I can only wonder what my friends with Lumax lamps on their motor vehicle’s face in areas with much more moisture, water logging and bountiful rains.