Gidday all,
(Garry M - maybe I should have put this one in electrical?)
One of my headlight reflectors was in poor condition. The silver had almost disappeard with spots of rust.
Knowing that aluminium is used these days rather than silver (even in astronomy in reflector telescopes) I decided to try a little experiment.
On the bad reflector I covered it in aluminium tape, a very cheap and easy fix and tested them side be side.
Below are the results.
1st pic is high beam, Left is silver, right is aluminium tape
2nd pic is low beam, Left is silver, right is aluminium tape
3rd pic is aluminium tape reflector
4th pic is silver reflector
The beam from the aluminium tape is a little more focused/round whilst the silver headlight is a bit more scattered. This confused me a little, more tests required here I think to determine why the difference. But all in all though the silver is only marginally brighter than the foil. Note that these are H4 LEDs. My finding is that if one wanted an easy fix for headlight reflectors the aluminium tape is an excellent replacement when using H4 leds.
My options are to use the aluminium tape, re-silver or go the aluminium vacuum method which all aren't cheap and I have to send my reflectors away which I don't like to do. Additionally the fog lamp and parker reflectors all need re-doing too.
Rgds, Joe