Speak EV - Electric Car Forums banner

Does anybody else get fed up scraping the M3 frosty headlights?

10K views 56 replies 19 participants last post by  Exlatccatsa 
#1 ·
Frosty headlights on the Model 3 are a pain. I hadn't realised till this winter just how inneffective the LED headlights are at clearing frost and snow.
With my old diesel Xantia the ice will just melt off, whilst you're clearing the rest of the car, with the heat from the halogen bulbs.
With the model 3 needing minimal cleaning thanks to cabin preheating, it would be nice just to jump in and go. But no, the headlights need scraping.
I'm loath to use a scraper on them in case I damage the plastic lenses. I've never had plastic lenses before.
Anybody else got this problem?
Any solutions?
 
#3 ·
As above, scraping the lights will make it worse as it puts more finite scratches into the lenses for water and dirt to sit in.

Best thing is some warm water over them.

When clean and dry maybe try a good wax , ceramic coat or WD40. The more water you can stop them holding onto the less ice will form 😊

And that's quite a jump from a Xantia to an M3! Albeit the only downgrade is suspension ride in my opinion 😥
 
#4 ·
Yes It takes a bit of getting used to. I used to think the Xantia was the bees knees.. it is with the ride but compared to the M3 the steering is awful.. Those big sidewalls don't help, but are necessary for the Xantias legendary ride. I keep switching on the wipers in the Xantia when I'm ready to reverse into the drive :)
.. oh and putting on the brake in the M3 when trying to get the windscreen washers to work :( Isn't muscle memory amazing!!
I have ceramic coated the lenses but there's still a frost there.
However I had an idea that may fix the problem.. just waiting for a good frost to try it out.
 
#8 ·
Tire Wheel Automotive tire Vehicle Land vehicle
late Mk2 .with 70k. I have another sorned on 330k but will probably not see the road again.
Contemplating finding a way to get this one electrified. As the more weight the better the ride :)
 
#10 ·
View attachment 139623
late Mk2 .with 70k. I have another sorned on 330k but will probably not see the road again.
Contemplating finding a way to get this one electrified. As the more weight the better the ride :)
Ahhh the good old HDi units, a 110bhp is it as it looks like SX trim :) Nice rarer colour too.

I thought about electric with the XM as you say, the ride only gets better with weight! but it was a bit too crusty to keep much longer.
i think the easiest way would be a nissan leaf setup at the front and if you could make battery boxes and extend cabling to run between the boxes you could save more money with that setup, and possibly retain the Chademo & Type1/2 charging abilities..

If you haven't already do take the arch liners out and check behind them and the Dog bones as well as the seals on those joints can be atrocious and rust slowly creeps in :(
 
#12 ·
We had two Xantias in succession in between 1999-2005, couldn't tell you what trim levels but both were 2L petrols. One got written off in a head-on collision and I was surprised at how well it held up given the half a star NCAP. We had liked it so much we bought another to replace it, the only difference was the colour.
I remember being obsessed with the uppey-downey suspension.
 
#13 ·
They are very hardy cars for their age and price thats for sure.

For the Dogs legs i've seen a few posts from french groups where they strip them out and do the job properly.
The ones i found the worst always had well filled arches with crusted on muck that had been there for years and likely not parked anywhere a breeze and the sun could get to them to help dry them out. washing them out often is a good way to make them last. Kurust can help but really they need cutting out and redoing as you'll find it gets very bad inside when it starts to bubble :(

@DBMandrake has a good bit of experience of them and i've owned one of his V6's as well, which apparently was being shipped off to Iran to live another life after a gearbox rebuild. I owned another which was always parked inside a garage for many scottish months on end so was just totally rotted out but i parted that car out to help a good few others live on and the engine i believe went into an MX5 or an RX8 i think.
 
#16 · (Edited)
The material arrived early. Its fine for what it is, but the smooth bag material will work and look better.
What do you think?

I know @DBMandrake well from the French Car Forum. He certainly does have a lot of experience with them amd has helped me out many times. Yes, inside arches are pretty bad as are the door shut infront of the rear arch. The estates were assembled in a different factory to the saloons and used dissimilar metals leading to the rust from the inside out.
T is still going and sold, V is sorned after 330K, and W has only 70K all Sx's same seats. T is a TD the others Hdi.
I think I sould rename this thread Xantia Memories.
Motor vehicle Tire Wheel Mode of transport Land vehicle
 
#15 ·
The material arrived early. Its fine for what it is, but the smooth bag material will work and look better.
What do you think?
 
#17 ·
So to get back to the thread back on track. Any takers for the above?
The new suckers work better than the older ones and the eyelets have a hold on the fabrc so the fabric and suckers can't separate as happened on the Mk1 design.
 
#18 ·
Come up many times before, and I laugh.

LED headlights are a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Residual heat is required in the headlight and a filament bulb does this admirably in one package, delivering both heat and light.

... an LED headlight with a build in heater ... you couldn't make it up .... well, someone did .... clearly not an engineer.
 
#19 ·
#20 · (Edited)
Frosty headlights on the Model 3 are a pain. I hadn't realised till this winter just how inneffective the LED headlights are at clearing frost and snow.
With my old diesel Xantia the ice will just melt off, whilst you're clearing the rest of the car, with the heat from the halogen bulbs.
Same problem on my Leaf.

Huge headlight glass area with LED low beams and a fairly horizontal angle that as a result frost up really easily in the winter.

The first time it happened I wasn't sure what was going on - I hadn't noticed the very thin layer of frost (almost invisible under the garage security light on a dark morning) but soon noticed on the road that the headlights seemed very dim and diffuse. Pulled over and noticed the frost and wiped it off by hand. The tiniest layer of frost makes a huge difference to the light pattern as it totally diffuses the pattern.

So now checking and if necessary cleaning the headlights is a morning ritual if the car is snowy or frosty. However that doesn't solve the problem that snow can settle on the headlights or frost can form while the car is driving, as there is no heat to keep it melted... :rolleyes:

LED headlights have the advantage that they should (in theory) last a lot longer but in every other way they're a retrograde step, including (in my opinion) the very sharp cut off that has zero bleed above the cut off line - meaning you literally can't see anything just beyond the cut off point.

Meanwhile on the Xantia very small, near vertical glass area on the headlights with both filament bulb heat and engine bay heat to keep them melted. Never an issue with snow/ice or frost.
 
#21 ·
Well they're on EBay. Attached properly they won't blow off in a gale and are easy to remove by sliding off, and are attached close enough to the headlight to stop snow blowing underneath.
Tesla Model 3 Headlight covers. 1 pair. Stops frosty, snowy headlights | eBay
Available here with a discount £11 a pair inc. postage. DM me for more info.
Chris

Send me a template and I'll make you up a pair :)
 
#27 ·
You are forgetting the greater legal quantity of light put out and the simpler choice of wavelengths leading to improved vision. The heat on the headlamps also causes the dirt to bake onto the headlights. Personally I am willing to trade the lack of heating to clear ice/snow from the headlamps for the other benefits.
 
#29 ·
You are forgetting the greater legal quantity of light put out and the simpler choice of wavelengths leading to improved vision.
I'd like to see some scientific evidence that a cold white LED light gives "improved vision" vs more natural warm white of a filament bulb, especially if there are street lamps in the area which are a very different (warm) colour temperature. Viewing a scene with a mixture of lights of wildly varying colour temperature is not easy on the eyes and in general I find cold white LED lights whilst bright are not very easy to see by. The mixture of cold white LED dip beam and warm white filament high beam on the Leaf I find quite distracting when using high beam.

And then there is the issue that LED dip beams with high intensity and sharp cut off are terrible for dazzling oncoming motorists every time the oncoming car hits a bump or travels up an incline pointing the dip beam directly into your line of sight.
The heat on the headlamps also causes the dirt to bake onto the headlights.
Versus the mud just staying on the glass and blocking the light anyway? :unsure: Funnily enough in almost 30 years of driving cars with filament bulb headlights I have never had mud "bake" onto headlights before. So I'm sceptical this is even a real problem. The glass only gets warm enough to melt ice, not to "bake" anything. But frosting headlights is a real thing and I've had it happen to me several times in the last couple of weeks alone.
 
#30 ·
Once or twice a year? Where do you live? Even in my 25 years in Bournemouth we had tens of nights a year with frost.
 
#33 ·
It's never been a problem in several years of owning an EV. I guess if I was driving in the early morning when it was dark..
Like every morning for me in the winter... :)
but even then, it'd have to be pretty heavy frost to significantly impair them.
That's what you would think, but the frost scatters the beam in all directions. Even I was surprised at how dramatically a thin film of frost affected the headlights - looking at the headlights from outside they appear normal brightness as the frost doesn't really block the light like snow would, however the sharp cut off line on the road was completely gone due to the scattering effect of the frost.

There was certainly some light still visible on the road but had I not been driving in a built up area with street lighting it would not have been a safe amount of illumination. Subjectively it was only maybe half as bright as it should be on the road ahead of me, because the other half of the light that should have been focused on the road would have been scattered in all other directions.
 
#34 ·
139769

Last night after a 14 mile round trip to drop my wife at work. Freezing rain..water droplets falling onto-3c surfaces. .headlights glazed over with about 3mm of clear ice...next to no difference between high and low beam. Completely cleared before I left. I wouldn't have wanted to drive much further with this ice buildup..the front of the car was completely sealed in ice.
 
#36 ·
RainXed on Sunday in preparation for the snow. The problem is that I can only get up to 40-50 MPH on some parts of the road so not enough to drive the freezing rain off. TBH freezing ran can stick to anything its especially bad in the aviation industry where it can stop wings flying. Its nasty stuff.
I think the only solution would be a small heating element running along the bottom of the headlight.
@Woodulike yes Southerly facing drives do help a lot in the winter, but the they have their drawbacks in the summer. I've had both, currently North Easterly So I'm just starting to get the advantage of the rising sun to clear the frosts.
 
#44 ·
TBH freezing ran can stick to anything its especially bad in the aviation industry where it can stop wings flying. Its nasty stuff.
Flying into known icing conditions in an aircraft without FIKI equipment is very dangerous, yes. The solution is not to fly in those conditions.

In a car it’s somewhat simpler, you pull over to the side of the road safely and clear them. The hazards in freezing rain on roads is the lack of grip rather than iced up lights to be fair.
 
#41 ·
Only 2 pairs of headlight covers left. Awaiting new fabric but due to the lockdown don't know when that will be. £11 inc postage to the forum members.
 
#48 ·
I've actually suffered this a few times this week.

It almost feels like a backwards step to be able to pre-heat and clear the car of frost, only to have to scratch around for a can of deicer anyway!
Yep. But don't tell the LED believers. :p

I bought a pair of "gardening" gloves from the middle row in LIDL recently with the black waterproof slightly knobbly side on the palms and I've found them brilliant for wiping frost off the headlights without having to resort to de-icer. They have enough texture to scrape it off but not be abrasive. I've also found them great for sweeping off snow accumulation on the car in general without getting cold or wet hands/gloves.
 
#49 ·
I've got some coloured PVC material, thicker than the ripstop and the frost and snow just fall off rather than having to shake it off the ripstop.
140380
140381

Plus you can tuck the material in around the top of the headlight to further deny moisture access. I have Grey and Black PVC available as well.
Due to the new material being less expensive than I thought, I've brought the price down to £10.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top