RE: Ur-q tailight

[EICHSTEV@aol.com]

On 2/12/99 Steve Buchholz said: 

>  Tomas has the smoked ones on his '85
>  qtc ... while they do look sorta cool on the car I noticed while we were
>  driving up to Thunderhill that the smoked lights definitely put out a lot
>  less light.  I could barely tell when he had his turn signals on ... and
>  this was at night!

Sounds like he has the spray-on tint, or poor connections.  Surprisingly, the
factory blacked-out lights are just as bright as the regular lights.  I did a
side by side comparison with the sets I have.  The blacked-out lights have an
extra clear lens in them to direct the light, perhaps to lessen the effects of
darkening the lens.  I believe the TUV in Germany has a standard for the light
output, and therefore the blacked-out lights MUST be a bright and the non-
tinted lights.

>  I would expect that you'd need to go to Europe to find them (another reason
>  to get that D&W catalog? :).  There were some threads in the past on the
>  qlist about some spray-on treatment that made your stock lenses into smoked
>  ones ...

The blacked-out lights are still available at your local dealer in Europe, but
are rather pricey.  Remember if you order them to get the reflector panel for
the Swiss model, as it has the proper cutout for the US license plate, as well
as the the nice cast metal foglight housing.

Here are the relevant part numbers:
855 945 695 F  Center reflector, Swiss market
855 945 218 C  Right
855 945 217 C  Left

HTH!

Steve Eiche
'82 Not So Ur q 20Vt