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 All the Information - Without any sales hype    

Tip of the Week Industry News

Facts About Headlights

In the beginning, cars and trucks used incandescent or “sealed beam” headlights. Similar in design and function to your typical screw-in light bulb, they used a tungsten steel wire – or filament - sealed in a glass lens. When electricity passed through the filament it became so hot that it produced a steady and reliable source of light. As with home lighting, sealed beams had limitations. The brightness was limited and the light produced was not clean, natural-looking but a dingy tainted or yellow color. They also weren’t very efficient. The energy used to light the bulb actually produced 95% heat and only 5% light.

Next came the Halogen headlight. Around 1978, a brighter longer-lasting headlight hit the market. Although still an incandescent bulb, it was filled with an inert gas known as halogen which allowed it to burn brighter and last longer. This is still the most common style headlight in the industry. Early halogen headlights were sized and shaped like the old sealed beams which were either round or rectangular. This was convenient if you wanted to upgrade your lighting to the new halogens, but eventually the bulb and the headlight capsule or lens became two separate items. This allowed manufacturers to design the smooth streamlined headlights that are common today. The halogen bulb merely snaps into the back of the unit to provide the light source and is actually self-contained.

The latest technology regarding headlights deals with eliminating the tungsten steel filament that has been the common component of lighting since Thomas Edison. Such is the case with vapor lamps. Mercury and sodium vapor lamps are used in streetlights and at sports stadiums. But for automotive applications Xenon gas is the way to go. Xenon gas headlights produce a brilliant bluish light three times brighter than a halogen bulb, while using 65% less energy. The automotive industry has dubbed these style headlights “High Intensity Discharge” or HID headlights. While very bright, they use a special controller or ballast to create an arc between two points which excites the gas and creates light. To accomplish this, the ballast steps up the voltage from 12volts that the vehicle runs on, to 20,000 volts to ignite the xenon in the bulb.

Unfortunately, all of this high-tech magic adds to the price of having HID lighting. HID bulbs and ballasts can run hundreds of dollars to replace while a halogen bulb is twenty dollars or so. And don’t be fooled by imitations – HID produces a blue light but not every blue light is an HID.

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Cadillac Tunes ATS for Refined Performance Sound

DETROIT - The all-new 2013 Cadillac ATS is being exhaustively developed to achieve excellent driving dynamics - and that performance focus extends to the sounds it makes.

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New Buick Buyers Include One With a Familiar Name

DETROIT - Buick attracted more than 40 percent of its customers from outside General Motors in 2011. That number rose to more than one in two last month for the new Verano compact luxury sedan, which went on sale in December

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Chevrolet Cruze Remains Best Selling Compact Car in U.S.

 

For the fourth month in a row, the Chevrolet Cruze is the best-selling compact car in the United States, recording a total of 21,807 sales in August. It is also the fifth-consecutive month of Cruze sales exceeding 20,000 units.

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OnStar Looking to Make the Smart Grid Smarter

Offering set of application programming interfaces to utilities and energy companies

DETROIT -   OnStar is inviting utilities, energy companies and tech firms to develop Smart Grid solutions for the Chevrolet Volt using a set of proprietary OnStar application programming interfaces, or APIs.

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Patent

Patent Board: GM Remains Top Automotive Innovator

DETROIT - General Motors remains the No. 1 innovator for the fourth-consecutive quarter among 183 companies ranked by The Patent Board in its quarterly automotive and transportation industry scorecard.

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Chevrolet Sonic Digital Efforts Help Drive Early Sales

DETROIT - The all-new Chevrolet Sonic is building a digital reputation and a legion of fans by bungee jumping, sky diving and successfully completing a skateboard-style kick flip. The one thing missing in its first six months on sale - traditional TV advertising.

 

 

              

 

 

What About Us?


The goal of this site is to help you understand more about the entire car ownership experience.  You will find nothing to buy here except occasional items from my personal troves.  Our goal is to make you a well informed consumer of the second most expensive investment you may ever make in life - your car!  Your feedback and questions are welcome.  Check out Tips of the Trade for  common car questions.  You will find general information relative to various makes and models. We are first-class maniacal car enthusiasts who love high-tech as well as old school. For our purpose GM simply stands for General Mechanics - that's what we do, what we know and what we share!

 

This site is not sponsored by or in any way affiliated with the General Motors Corporation. Photography © GM Corp. and  provided by GM Media.

 

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 This site was last updated 02/06/12