Melted headlight.......... help

HGMark said:

Good evening,

It's been a while since I've posted on here so apologies, I have a 2007 Tuono R and have always had on it black headlight covers - last 5 years I've owned it. Not posted In a while as been off the road and it's been in the back of the garage, long story short got the bike back out and had it ticking over only to find the left hand headlight has melted at the top?? Just the outer lens not anything else. I had ordered on ebay some of the sticky plastic Velcro tabs for these which were much bigger than the skidmarx ones, almost looks like these have reacted with the lens and caused it to melt/cave in. I now have a new left hand headlight to go in and some of the sticky plastic Velcro from skidmarx but needless to say don't want it happening again..........

Anyone else had this or know of it? Was it down to my stupid fault and the bike ticking over for 15-20 minutes?

If it is due to hot bulbs does anyone run LED bulbs? As I believe they are much cooler....

Thanks for reading this and hope someone can help,

Mark

Click to expand...

Not sure if I can be of help, but I can offer a couple of opinions (in a very nerdy way), working in the plastics manufacturing industry....

I really don't think this would be caused by temperature. Headlight covers / lenses are usually made from either acrylic or polycarbonate, both of which have softening temperatures around 100 deg C and melt temperatures in excess of 150 to 180 deg C and it's unlikely that your headlight bulb will get hot enough to cause the plastic to heat up this much (not unless the bulb was actually in contact with the lens).
Headlight covers will prevent the main lens from getting any cooling effect from air at the front - but this doesn't really apply if the bike's standing still.

An alternative thought is that the adhesive on the sticky pads could have something in it which has been attacking the headlight lens, causing it to break down. This could also be compounded by the heat caused by the headlight being switched on. Some adhesives have heat-activated properties. I've done a lot of work recently relating to plastics and adhesives, and you wouldn't believe the effects different types of adhesives can have on polymers.

Were the headlight covers top notch, or cheapy ones? If cheapy then the manufacturer is less likely to have thought "hmmm, which adhesive pad is going to be best for this application?" and probably went for "which adhesive pad is cheap - I don't care if it is compatible with plastic!"

Food for thought....
Rich