01/08/2005: "New headlamp lasted all of 3 hours!"

Since the recent headlamp project on the Marlin I had left over (as spares) one brand new halogen and one slightly grubby halogen headlamp.

These headlamps are the same size as what is on the landrover (and in my austin mini van). And the landrover was fitted with the old dull yellow sealed beams. So, yeah, I changed them over to the halogens today and they worked very well, big improvement.

Drove to Wales this evening and somewhere/sometime between me fitting the lamps and arriving in Wales the brand new lamp had been smashed with a ruddy great hole in the glass. Common sense would tell me I must of fitted them wrong, put a stress point by mis-positioning or trapped a piece of grit etc but I had checked both lamps by pushing them onto their sprung seatings and was happy with the fitting. Not loose, not jammed in wrong alignment, not about to pop off onto the floor...

So it comes down to either someone smashed it or it got hit by something like a stone enroute. How unlucky is that? why couldn't the slight grubby one get nuked as I was going to replace it with a new sometime. Now I have to re-fit the sealed beams and look for a pair of halogen bargins on eBay.

Will try to get some photos tommorrow.