[caption id="attachment_77" align="aligncenter" width="644"]3M Headlight Protection Film 3M Headlight Protection Film[/caption]

People are asking us on a regular basis why they have to be concerned with protecting modern vehicle headlights.
The general feeling is that because headlights have moved from glass to acrylic plastic they are not vulnerable to the problems that glass lenses had. WRONG!
The fact that modern acrylic headlight lenses can be formed to incredible shapes, matching and sometimes dictating body lines is great for styling but that's where it stops.
New modern acrylic plastic lenses scratch, haze, stone pit and crack causing foggy appearances that can restrict and distort light output. They can get hit hard enough to pit and crack the lens enough to not be visually noticed but let in moisture creating fog within the light itself destroying the interior of the light.
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Scratched Foggy HeadlightScratched Foggy Headlight[/caption]
In certain cases, the lens can actually be shattered. A customer of ours actually hit a bird with his new Suburban that broke the whole side out of his headlight. After more than a $1000.00 replacement cost he now has our LightGard light protection film kit.
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Unprotected HeadlightUnprotected Headlight[/caption]
Gone are the days of replacing a broken headlight from the local auto parts store for 15 to 20 dollars. New acrylic lenses are expensive. A new headlight for a Lexus ES350 is $983.57 a Lexus LS460 is $1920.83 and a new Corvette headlight is well over $1500.00. Those are investments worth protecting.
There are many light protection devices on the market today but most of these products are thick (30-50 mil) semi clear or tinted colored plastic that use generic pressure sensitive adhesive systems with no formal testing. Beware of these. They are very stiff hard to apply to compound curves of modern vehicle headlamps. They tend to reduce and distort light as well as come loose and fail especially when temperatures drop below freezing.
Make sure when investing in light protection kits you demand to see some
published performance data from independent sources
For example our exclusive LightGard light protection film is made for us ClearMask) by 3M's aerospace division and is the same film they use for commercial and ilitary aircraft ray dome (nose cone ) boots. 3M aerospace has done extensive testing on this optically clear film at the University of Dayton Research Institute. They tested the film used in LightGard at 500 miles per hour and at temperatures as low as -30 degrees centigrade with simulated 1" rain without showing damage. Total test procedures and results are available at www.clearmask.com.
Modern headlight protection is well worth the investment!