When we purchased Miss April the front headlights were showing the wear and tear of over 100,000 miles on the road. The inside of the headlight buckets were beginning to rust, and the glass covers had the typical road rash and pitting that comes from small rocks hitting the glass. There are reproduction glass lenses available today, but they are not made correctly. The original glass has the lettering on the OUTSIDE of the glass. Reproduction ones sometimes omit the lettering, and/or some have it on the inside. Also note the photo of the bottom of the headlight assembly that shows the original part number and date code of A 45- the 45th week of 1964. By the way, the original configuration on her headlights for a 356 C is with the adjustment screws at 1 and 7 o'clock, and there are two rivets at the securing tab.
I removed the rivets, and properly re-chromed the headlight rings. Tabs were restored and reinstalled with correct rivets. The sealed beams are NOS (new old stock).
I removed the rivets, and properly re-chromed the headlight rings. Tabs were restored and reinstalled with correct rivets. The sealed beams are NOS (new old stock).
If you look through some of my Blog postings, you'll see the NOS sealed beams I sourced, the correct seals, and also the restoration of the original headlight rims. This weekend I was able to finish the headlights.
I was able to communicate with Jan Kolm about the numbering on the headlight glass. Most guys know it should be raised on the outside of the glass, but the numbers that curve along the bottom correspond to when the glass was produced. That numbering system is not well understood, but there are some good data points. I needed to understand it before sourcing replacement glass (mine was really really bad). In an email to me Jan said
"Paul,
The digits in front of 60370-03 are used in chronological order, the lowest numbers dating from the end of 1963 and the highest numbers in the low 30s (1970s-80s replacements).
I have a VW headlight assembly dated A40 (probably close to yours), with a lens marked 10-60370-03. The leading numbers do not need to be matching, but should be close (within 1-2 numbers).
Thanks,
Jan K."
With this information, I was able to get 11-60370-03 from Elizabeth Richardson- Thanks Elizabeth!
Then, armed with all the right parts, I only had to clean, paint and polish.
The actual sealed beam that goes into our 356's is an interesting trail to go down. Back in 2005 I owned an early '66 912 and was restoring the headlights for it. I researched pretty hard at that time and here is a link to a brief discussion of this on the 912 Registry website: https://www.912bbs.org/forum/threads/headlight-question.15988/
Since that time I have lost my research. However, I do remember some of the information. Sealed beam headlights were a US thing- not used in Europe where our favorite sports car manufacturer was located. The US market was the dominant use of sealed beam headlights and there were a few large manufacturers stateside. If memory serves me correctly, the largest back then was Tung-Sol. Reference this Wikipedia page for more on them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tung-Sol This was a US company based in New Jersey and a supplier to many car manufacturers. I know many think of GE, but on original early Porsche cars I could find at the time, very few had GE lights and many had Tung-Sol.
I was able to communicate with Jan Kolm about the numbering on the headlight glass. Most guys know it should be raised on the outside of the glass, but the numbers that curve along the bottom correspond to when the glass was produced. That numbering system is not well understood, but there are some good data points. I needed to understand it before sourcing replacement glass (mine was really really bad). In an email to me Jan said
"Paul,
The digits in front of 60370-03 are used in chronological order, the lowest numbers dating from the end of 1963 and the highest numbers in the low 30s (1970s-80s replacements).
I have a VW headlight assembly dated A40 (probably close to yours), with a lens marked 10-60370-03. The leading numbers do not need to be matching, but should be close (within 1-2 numbers).
Thanks,
Jan K."
With this information, I was able to get 11-60370-03 from Elizabeth Richardson- Thanks Elizabeth!
Then, armed with all the right parts, I only had to clean, paint and polish.
The actual sealed beam that goes into our 356's is an interesting trail to go down. Back in 2005 I owned an early '66 912 and was restoring the headlights for it. I researched pretty hard at that time and here is a link to a brief discussion of this on the 912 Registry website: https://www.912bbs.org/forum/threads/headlight-question.15988/
Since that time I have lost my research. However, I do remember some of the information. Sealed beam headlights were a US thing- not used in Europe where our favorite sports car manufacturer was located. The US market was the dominant use of sealed beam headlights and there were a few large manufacturers stateside. If memory serves me correctly, the largest back then was Tung-Sol. Reference this Wikipedia page for more on them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tung-Sol This was a US company based in New Jersey and a supplier to many car manufacturers. I know many think of GE, but on original early Porsche cars I could find at the time, very few had GE lights and many had Tung-Sol.
