The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Electrical Bay LED Headlight Replacement Question

Every LED headlight I've seen to "upgrade" sealed beam headlights is made out of plastic instead of glass.

Do these LED headlights suffer the same fate as every plastic headlight I've ever seen since the Feds allowed them to be used in place of glass sealed beam headlights? That is, do they turn yellow and cloudy after a year or two?

On a related note; Why don't taillights succumb to the same UV rays that make plastic headlights turn yellow and unusable? I've never seen a taillight with the same affliction as modern headlights on the same car.

The LED bulbs I have simply replace H4 halogen bulbs. The clouding of the plastic is not related to the bulb inside. The lenses on my headlamps with H4 LED bulbs are glass.

The yellowing and clouding of plastic headlamp covers seems to be a thing of the past. Maybe pre-1990? All the cars we have had (or have) did not have this problem. This includes 2006 Toyota, 2003 Nissan, 2010 GMC, 2013 Acura and 2021 Lexus. We still have the 2010 GMC and the lenses still look like new. We keep our cars inside the garage so that would help.

I know it isn't the bulb/lamp causing the yellowing. It's UV radiation that causes the degradation of the plastic lenses. I was just wondering if the LED replacement headlamps, which are made from plastic, deteriorate the way factory plastic headlights do.

A new car with plastic headlight lenses will get yellowing in short order if it lives outside in some place like Arizona. They probably have the headlight restoration kits in the checkout line at the grocery stores down there.

My truck is inside most of the time, shows or out driving when in the sun. The headlights were top of the line Cibie from 1999, plastic lens, they still look like new. My '03 Tacoma lights are starting to fade from top down, tail lights are a little dull, but nothing like a head light. Maybe the red color has something to do with it.