Headlight tints, albeit they are absolutely just marketing gimmicks to a certain extent, but hey, it’s all about the #BecauseRaceCar trend! Well, time for some fun facts that by all means, even I didn’t know of! The whole trend of yellow headlights came along during endurance racing.
Because endurance racing takes extensive amount of hours for racing, it isn’t financially and hype inducing to run several 12 hour races back to back. Just imagine watching 72 hours straight of racing! I mean, some die-hard fans will still say it’s no problemo, but I digress. You may say, why don’t they just have a day worth of break in between? Well, who is going to continue paying for the circuit’s rental charges? Who’s going to pay for entertainment during the downtime to keep spectators there? There are many reasons why and why not, and it’s been done, such as GridLife.
Okay, let’s get back to the meat and potatoes. Imagine flatting out the throttle pedal around the Nürburgring and cruising at an excess of 150-200 km/h, I highly doubt you’ll be able to squint your eyes and figure out what car that is that is riding your tail, hence yellow headlights! Cars with white lights are among the lower class in terms of power/weight ratio, while cars with yellow headlights are usually cars that are any petrolheads wet dream. Take this for example:
Pic from hotrod.com http://www.hotrod.com/articles/far-from-failure-what-racing-the-gt-does-for-ford/
The infamous Ford GT that costs $450,000USD at its base for a streetcar (if you can even call it that) and a Ford GT3 Evo that’s been used and abused like it’s meant to costs just about €425,000. Yes that’s in Euros, which is approximately $520,000USD, which also relates to the ballpark figure of RM2,050,000!
Anyways, as some of you would be requesting, TL;DR, bloody fast endurance racing cars have yellow headlights, while white headlights are for cars that really shouldn’t be in their way.
Now, why do some street cars use yellow headlights? I personally use them because they are a significant boost in seeing certain objects while driving hard. To be frank, there are no scientific research or backing that proves this, but me on the other hand, loves the look of it and also can actually tell the difference! While driving through narrow back roads, I’m at the brink of focusing on the road ahead of me, somehow or other, I can see some shadows much better!
Just for the ridalong on this article, here’s my process of doing this headlight tint myself on a less than shoestring budget :D I got the tint from a friendly neighbourhood seller on the forum.lowyat.net website, which is the only thing I bought for this DIY. Basically, the only thing you need for this is the tint, some controlled heat source such as a hairdryer, a microfiber cloth, and don’t forget the item you wanna wrap!
Before: That monster truck height tho!
First step is to remove your headlights, it’s much easier for me, but some wrap shops prefer to leave them on. This way, I can actually control it much easier.
During: Yarrrrr!!!
Second step is to prepare some sort of cleaning liquid, be it glass cleaner, car shampoo or even dishwashing detergent. In this case, I’m using a wax and grease remover from Turtle Wax. There are debates on what fluids to use to clean bla bla bla, but to me, nothing beats some sort of degreaser or even brake cleaner.
Next would be to cut the tint with a bunch of wiggle room for you to pull and stretch. Start by removing the plastic backing for the sticky side, DO NOT REMOVE THE PROTECTIVE FILM ON TOP. Use a heatgun or hairdryer in my case to heat up the first half of the film and stretch it over the largest flat spot of the headlight.
Don’t be a dumb like me and start off with the the smallest side first, I took approximately 2 hours just to wrap this piece because I couldn’t stretch it properly.
Upon reaching the ends, try to meet it up till where the clear lens ends, then use a blade to trim the excess.
Now this is why I said not to remove the protective film during the install process, I stretched and massaged the film so much, the film tore on its own.
A good clean tear of the protective film later, you’re left with a nicely tinted headlight!
After: Yellow yellow, looks like gold
Now, what’s the whole point of doing this? Well, I find this quite functional as mentioned above, but also my car might be having a cameo appearance in a music video soon which you should totally wait for!
Ta-Ta!
-Willie