Headlight Resilvering

Somewhere on here there was a post about resilvering the headlight reflectors by spraying molten aluminum or something like that.

Looking for the address to send my reflectors off of my 36 Ford.

 

I'm curious as well. There is a place in colorado that wants $80 each to do it. Seems kind of high. I'd post the name but I can't remember it.

 

Steve's Auto Restorations in Portland does it.
From their website:

http://www.realsteel.com/headlight.php

 

The originator of the aluminum spray thing was a company called UVIRA up the Pacific NW. I think it was a commercial app for some NASA or other governemnt developed tech with a great use for early cars etc. lighting. Gives something like 96% of the refectivity of silver with notarnishing or deterioration.

 

You can buy repro reflectors for 27 bucks each. Is it really that necessary to resilver your originals? Macs and most any early Ford store has them.



I used the repro reflectors back in the 70s with Ron Francis bright bulbs with good results. You can get them now with Halogen bulb sockets.

 

I thought I read somewhere that the new reflectors did not reflect the light correctly. This is why I was thinking about resilvering my reflectors.

Have been looking through all of my old magazines for an article on headlight reflectors, can not find it. Maybe I was dreaming.

 

I just have my plating shop do them in nickle. It works good, and is relatively inexpensive. Also, with the early Ford headlamps, the lens is the really important piece, as repops are never made properly. The original lenses were designed and manufactured to correctly gather and focus the light, where the repops just sort of look like the originals, but do not have the same abitity. Always try to find and use original lenses and reflectors, if possible. They will give the best performance.

 

Try UVIRA (541) 474-5050. It's not the cheap solution but I am going to use them because I feel it's the best solution.

Charlie Stephens

 

Thanks for the info. I finally got to work on my car a little today. After taking apart the headlights and looking at the reflectors I think I will get the H-4 reflectors and use my original lenses. Looks like it is the best solution.

 

Try Bert's Model A in Denver as Steve used to do do this 800/321-1931

 

FWIW, I had my reflectors done by UVIRA probably 30 years ago and they still work as good as the day I installed them. ZERO maintenance, nice bright headlites. I put a halogen bulb in also. MITCH.

 

After reading a couple of other posts I have changed my mind again (happens a lot). I think I will get the original reflectors done at UVIRA and install the halogen bulbs.