[Sanidhya mukund]

Originally Posted by rahul_kej

I hope by now you have got your answer for the black strip on the headlight back then, though little off topic but am surprised that no one put on this question that do you have any plan to restore those too iconic classics specially the Tata Estate or they will stay abandoned for ever or any plans of scrapping?

I really want to restore them, but am unable to do so at the moment for various reasons. One huge handicap is the NGT ruling here that bans the use of older cars. It not only makes them difficult to sell, but also makes it difficult for one to think about investing huge sums of money in restoring a car that can neither be legally driven on the Road as daily driver, nor can it be registered as an antique, because a car has to be at least 50 years old to be called an antique under the upcoming rules.

But I really don't want to scrap them. I am just hoping that in the coming years, we get to see something innovative like low cost EV retro-fitment to allow them to come back to life. Until then, they will have to bite the dust.

[Ravi Parwan]

Glifford and Salil have both pointed out the futility of this black strip. It blocks the low beam reflection from hitting the street and is detrimental to proper lighting of the road.
It might have been a descendant of the top fairing shown on the bullet, which might have been to block light going up instead of to the front of the vehicle.

In the end, all I can say is good riddance to a senseless practice. it is right up there with the reflective round stickers that they pasted by force at the back of your car in 2000's. That might make sense for commercial vehicles that have nonfunctional backlights, but made no sense on the passenger vehicles with working tail lamps.

[himsgpta]

Very interesting question. I remember asking my father about this and he had no clue why. The most logical answer he could think was to prevent glare to the oncoming traffic, which even i think is the real answer.

Thanks to the replies on this forum, now i know the real answer( very close to what my father suggested).

[ais]

Originally Posted by Glifford

I think this was the stupidest thing ever done and a knee jerk reaction to a genuine problem without any scientific thought whatsoever!

Now coming to why masking off the top is a bad idea!

Remember the light "throw" is done by the reflector, NOT the bulb. So in a parabolic reflector. The light going downward (to the ground ahead) is reflected by the upper part of the reflector (and emerges from the top part of the headlamp). And vice versa for the light going upward.

This can be clearly seen in the pic shared by Saikarthik below:



Hence by painting the top half of the headlamp, you are actually blocking the light that is going downward to the road ahead, while completely ignoring the glare going upward and actually blinding oncoming drivers!

And the net result is drivers cannot see the road well enough, so inadvertently switch to high beam and thus blind oncoming traffic more as the lower part of the headlamp is not blacked out!

Same goes with black dot in the centre of the headlamp. The glare hardly comes from the bulb itself, rather from the reflector around it. That said, most halogens have a blackened end anyway!

I'm glad you explained this so nicely.

Further, the bulb's filament that works on high beam is the lower one. So painting the upper part of the lens will have no effect on the gigh beam.

This black strip was a stupid idea to generate black money, and totally nonsensical.

[Mr.Boss]

I'm purchasing the sealed beam reflectors from 2012 for various motorcycle HL upgrade, from all available brands including Hella made in Germany reflectors but for the first time I got this black sticker a part of the package



Speaking about data privacy and data mining, almost every product or service that we discuss in WA groups I never failed to get an ad recommendation in Facebook or Google. I doubt if Hella is watching TBHP and went a step ahead to supply the black sticker also

PS: Other day we were at Suzuki 2 wheeler dealership and asked the SA why do they still paste the small black round sticker on the headlamp. He promptly replied "Saar, earlier the headlamps will either be round or rectangle, so we managed to paste our dealership name with either of the 2 shaped strips on top of the HL. But now the HL comes in all available shapes, since we don't want to spend much in developing many stickers and this small one serves the purpose"

[Moto$apien]

Surprised that City Beautiful - Chandigarh Team-Bhpians have not replied.

Fond memories of challans being issued for not having the black strip on the headlamps. If I remember correctly during the 90s, 100% vehicles in the city had this strip for the 'assumed' glare cutting benefit.

City police was hyper active in issuing Rs.100 challan to any out-of-city car who ventured in the city without the said strip.

Even today, use of high beam in the city is prohibited and a favorite challan reason by the cops.