41 Amber Parking Light Lens

[neil morse]

I was looking for something in Bob's online catalog, and I happened upon this item.

 

 

http://bobsautomobilia.com/fender-lamps-pads-and-items/1941-fender-lamp-defusing-lens-.-pld-41/

 

Does anyone know what this is about?  Was this an original part on the '41's?  My car doesn't have these, and I just assumed the parking lights were white/clear the way most cars were, as far as I know, until 1968 or so, when front turn signals were required to be amber.  Whether these are authentic for the period or a "modern" addition, they seem like a good idea.

[Dynaflash8]

There is a pair of these with outer lenses on eBay for an astronomical price.  Just saying.......

 

Good luck

[neil morse]

30 minutes ago, Dynaflash8 said:

There is a pair of these with outer lenses on eBay for an astronomical price.  Just saying.......

 

Good luck

 

More than $12?  I'm not getting what you're saying here, or why you are wishing me good luck.  I'm just trying to find out if anyone knows whether these were standard on the 41's.

[Matt Harwood]

Yellow is an aftermarket creation. New plastic castings. Originals were clear. I don't think I'd want the amber and if I did, maybe I'd use an amber bulb instead. But there were no optional parking light colors, just white.

[neil morse]

Thanks, Matt.  That's what I wanted to know.  My car (and I'm sure many other 41's) lost these internal lenses on the parking lights at some point, so I wasn't even aware that they existed.  

Edited January 25, 2018 by neil morse (see edit history)

[Dynaflash8]

2 hours ago, Matt Harwood said:

Yellow is an aftermarket creation. New plastic castings. Originals were clear. I don't think I'd want the amber and if I did, maybe I'd use an amber bulb instead. But there were no optional parking light colors, just white.

I disagree.  I've had many of them when I was selling Buick parts, new in the Buick bag and they were amber.  Both of of the originals in my car are faded to clear but still have tinges of yellow around the edges, and finally, I have a pair on NOS lights, complete units, and the plastic sort of "heart shaped" defuser plastics are amber.

[Dynaflash8]

3 hours ago, neil morse said:

 

More than $12?  I'm not getting what you're saying here, or why you are wishing me good luck.  I'm just trying to find out if anyone knows whether these were standard on the 41's.

For the  pair, along with the other lenses he wants something like $144.99.  That's astronomical, don't you think?

 

Edited January 25, 2018 by Dynaflash8 (see edit history)

[neil morse]

Yes, that's a lot of money.  But that's not the question I was asking.  I don't know why you couldn't just address the question I was asking, but I guess you have given your answer in your response to Matt.

[Dynaflash8]

7 hours ago, neil morse said:

Yes, that's a lot of money.  But that's not the question I was asking.  I don't know why you couldn't just address the question I was asking, but I guess you have given your answer in your response to Matt.

Don't know what your problem is.  I answered your question from based on 48 years of knowledge and hands-on experience............Amber.  I simply added where I'd seen them available and added the personal comment that those I know of for sale are out of sight priced on eBay.  Remind me that you prefer me not to try help you again so that I won't offend you.

Edited January 25, 2018 by Dynaflash8 (see edit history)

[Matt Harwood]

9 hours ago, Dynaflash8 said:

I disagree.  I've had many of them when I was selling Buick parts, new in the Buick bag and they were amber.  Both of of the originals in my car are faded to clear but still have tinges of yellow around the edges, and finally, I have a pair on NOS lights, complete units, and the plastic sort of "heart shaped" defuser plastics are amber.

 

I probably shouldn't have been so definite in my answer, because there's no factory documentation either way. I suppose what Earl says is possible, but I have never seen amber NOS lenses. I have two sets of what appear to be extremely nice originals that I bought before repros were available and they're clear-ish, although they're yellowing quite a bit around the edges which might be what you're seeing. Plastics age whether they're used or not, so even NOS parts still in the bag will be affected. I can't say definitively, but to my eye, the yellow part looks like the discolored area; it doesn't look as if the clear area is where the amber has faded away. I've never seen a '41 with amber colored lights in operation--they all have white ones. And I can't imagine that the engineers would put an amber lens in a clear housing with a clear bulb so that the lens would be so visible to the naked eye. The diffuser was designed to spread the bulb's light throughout the housing so it wasn't a pinpoint of light and would instead fill the housing with light--adding a colored lens would be counter-intuitive to that purpose, especially if the amber was only visible from head-on and everything else was still clear. It would look odd and cause strange patterns on the outer lens.

 

I wasn't there in '41 so I can't say for certain, but the application and my own experience suggests they were originally clear and any old lenses that show traces of amber today are simply old plastic that's discolored. Those solid amber ones up above are DEFINITELY reproductions (I do have a set of those as well as a set of amber housing lenses that the guy who made them 10 years ago sent me to get my opinion on them. Kind of interesting but I won't use them because they're not correct).

 

Anyway, my only point is that I would stick with the clear lenses as they are overwhelmingly authentic whereas the amber ones were either not used in '41, or if they do exist as Earl suggests, perhaps used on certain cars only (export comes to mind). It's one of those things that is probably not 100% knowable simply because in 1941, nobody cared enough to make an official note somewhere that we can access today. Lost to the sands of time...

[neil morse]

3 hours ago, Dynaflash8 said:

Don't know what your problem is.  I answered your question from based on 48 years of knowledge and hands-on experience............Amber.  I simply added where I'd seen them available and added the personal comment that those I know of for sale are out of sight priced on eBay.  Remind me that you prefer me not to try help you again so that I won't offend you.

 

I am not offended at all, but now I'm concerned that I've offended you, which certainly wasn't my intention.  I respect your knowledge and experience, and as a newbie to this forum (and to Buicks), I am very grateful to have this as a resource to answer questions that I have.  I just could not discern an answer to my question in your response about the set of lenses offered on Ebay.

[Dynaflash8]

3 hours ago, Matt Harwood said:

 

I probably shouldn't have been so definite in my answer, because there's no factory documentation either way. I suppose what Earl says is possible, but I have never seen amber NOS lenses. I have two sets of what appear to be extremely nice originals that I bought before repros were available and they're clear-ish, although they're yellowing quite a bit around the edges which might be what you're seeing. Plastics age whether they're used or not, so even NOS parts still in the bag will be affected. I can't say definitively, but to my eye, the yellow part looks like the discolored area; it doesn't look as if the clear area is where the amber has faded away. I've never seen a '41 with amber colored lights in operation--they all have white ones. And I can't imagine that the engineers would put an amber lens in a clear housing with a clear bulb so that the lens would be so visible to the naked eye. The diffuser was designed to spread the bulb's light throughout the housing so it wasn't a pinpoint of light and would instead fill the housing with light--adding a colored lens would be counter-intuitive to that purpose, especially if the amber was only visible from head-on and everything else was still clear. It would look odd and cause strange patterns on the outer lens.

 

I wasn't there in '41 so I can't say for certain, but the application and my own experience suggests they were originally clear and any old lenses that show traces of amber today are simply old plastic that's discolored. Those solid amber ones up above are DEFINITELY reproductions (I do have a set of those as well as a set of amber housing lenses that the guy who made them 10 years ago sent me to get my opinion on them. Kind of interesting but I won't use them because they're not correct).

 

Anyway, my only point is that I would stick with the clear lenses as they are overwhelmingly authentic whereas the amber ones were either not used in '41, or if they do exist as Earl suggests, perhaps used on certain cars only (export comes to mind). It's one of those things that is probably not 100% knowable simply because in 1941, nobody cared enough to make an official note somewhere that we can access today. Lost to the sands of time...

Matt:  The NOS defuser lenses I had were in the bags and during the period 1973-1975 when I had tons of NOS parts.  The two new lamps I have here to put on my car have amber defusers.  I have never seen NOS, complete lamps without amber defusers, either in the 1973-75 period, when I installed new lamps on my 41 Limited from my stock, or now when I have a NOS pair to put onto the current 41 Roadmaster.  By the same token, I've never seen fully amber lenses on an old used set of lamps, although those on my 59K Roadmaster still have some tinges of amber.  All of that said, and I should have said this before, those shown at the top of this thread are far more orangy-amber than the originals I have seen which were a pale yellow all over and throughout the lens.  All of the parts I had in the seventies came from inside of Buick dealerships, attics, store-rooms.  During those years I cleaned out Buick dealerships from Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia and Pennsylvania, and when I found the defusers they were all the same color.  That's as much as I know about the subject; although I haven't looked in any of my parts books here that might have the number (1941, 1947, 1960) to see if any had a color in parenthesis after after the part number and description. 

Edited January 25, 2018 by Dynaflash8 (see edit history)

[Dynaflash8]

1 hour ago, neil morse said:

 

I am not offended at all, but now I'm concerned that I've offended you, which certainly wasn't my intention.  I respect your knowledge and experience, and as a newbie to this forum (and to Buicks), I am very grateful to have this as a resource to answer questions that I have.  I just could not discern an answer to my question in your response about the set of lenses offered on Ebay.

I thought you were looking for a pair

[Matt Harwood]

Here's an NOS lens. It's for a taillight, but it's the same plastic. It is technically "amber" today, but I bet it was clear in 1941. The amber color is purely due to age, not intent of the designers (why put an amber lens in a red taillight housing?). This might be where the confusion comes from.

 

 

If you're buying reproduction lenses for your front parking lights, the clear ones are correct. The amber ones are not.

[Dynaflash8]

Whatever you say, Matt, is okay with me.  The diffuser lenses in the parking lights, that were new, were in no way this dark of an amber, and same is true of the NOS diffuser lenses in my NOS parking light assemblies that are still in the box.  The original diffusers were a very pale yellow and very opaque.  But, whatever you say, except it amazes me that all of the protected lenses I've had, which were in paper envelopes were all exactly the same color.  I think we've reached an impasse, except when I get my tailights apart I'll see what color those difusers are.  As I recall, and that is extremely dangerous, there are two in each tailight, and one was totally clear while the other was opaque yellow (the top one), but I don't recall ever having any of those new in the bag so I won't argue that point.  By the way, how do you spell diffuser anyway?  I've tried various combinations and none of them pass spell-check.

 

Matt, I drove my car over to the paint supplier this afternoon and had them take a picture of the original Carlsbad Black.  They came up with a BMW color called Vulkangrau, code 35332

 

[Grandpa]

Pictured is the factory original equipment (not a reproduction) amber colored Fresnel lens for the parking light / turn signal on my 1941 Buick.

I amber color could be original or the result of aging; my feeling is that it was originally colored amber.

Grandpa

[neil morse]

Wow, I had no idea I would be touching off such a spirited discussion.  As I noted earlier, I didn't even know that the parking lights had these diffusers because they are missing from my car.  However, I did wonder about the coloring on the inner lenses in my tail lights when I took them apart recently to install new outer (red) lenses.  This is what the inner lenses looked like, after I cleaned them up with soap and water.

 

 

I wasn't sure whether they were this color to begin with, or whether they had "yellowed" from age.  They look a little lighter than the parking light lens in Grandpa's photo or the inner tail light lens in the photo posted by Matt.  Is it possible that the opposite thing is happening, i.e., these lenses started out a deeper amber color and then got faded from age/ sun/heat over many years? I guess it's a mystery, lost in the sands of time, as Matt says.

 

I also just checked Skip Boyer's list of plastic reproduction parts for 41's that I recently got from him, and interestingly enough, he lists "Parking Lamp condensing Lens [amber color]" for $29.00 each.  I don't know how the color of Boyer's reproductions compares with the ones offered by Bob's, but it's interesting that he identifies them as "amber."

 

At any rate, I am persuaded to go ahead and invest $24.00 in a pair of the reproductions from Bob's.  They seem close enough to be in the ball park, and I'm really more concerned about safety for my car (strictly a driver) than any concerns about authenticity.  I want my car to be basically correct, but anything that will help other drivers to see my turn signals is a plus as far as I'm concerned.

 

 

 

 

Edited January 26, 2018 by neil morse (see edit history)

[Dynaflash8]

1 hour ago, Grandpa said:

Pictured is the factory original equipment (not a reproduction) amber colored Fresnel lens for the parking light / turn signal on my 1941 Buick.

I amber color could be original or the result of aging; my feeling is that it was originally colored amber.

Grandpa

That's more like the color I remember.

[Dynaflash8]

21 minutes ago, neil morse said:

Wow, I had no idea I would be touching off such a spirited discussion.  As I noted earlier, I didn't even know that the parking lights had these diffusers because they are missing from my car.  However, I did wonder about the coloring on the inner lenses in my tail lights when I took them apart recently to install new outer (red) lenses.  This is what the inner lenses looked like, after I cleaned them up with soap and water.

 

 

I wasn't sure whether they were this color to begin with, or whether they had "yellowed" from age.  They look a little lighter than the parking light lens in Grandpa's photo or the inner tail light lens in the photo posted by Matt.  Is it possible that the opposite thing is happening, i.e., these lenses started out a deeper amber color and then got faded from age/ sun/heat over many years? I guess it's a mystery, lost in the sands of time, as Matt says.

 

I also just checked Skip Boyer's list of plastic reproduction parts for 41's that I recently got from him, and interestingly enough, he lists "Parking Lamp condensing Lens [amber color]" for $29.00 each.  I don't know how the color of Boyer's reproductions compares with the ones offered by Bob's, but it's interesting that he identifies them as "amber."

 

At any rate, I am persuaded to go ahead and invest $24.00 in a pair of the reproductions from Bob's.  They seem close enough to be in the ball park, and I'm really more concerned about safety for my car (strictly a driver) than any concerns about authenticity.  I want my car to be basically correct, but anything that will help other drivers to see my turn signals is a plus as far as I'm concerned.

 

 

 

 

Your post only verifies what I said, "don't ever depend strictly on your memory"   All of the tailight condensing lenses (proper name I'm reminded) I ever saw were amber or closer to clear.  I think probably they fade to clear rather than vice versa, but it's anybody's guess I suppose.  If you have a Super or Roadmaster and have an extra set of grungy tailights I'd like to buy them.  I have new chrome outers, but I'd like to build up a pair before I ever take my car apart.  Anyway, Skip Boyer and his late father have had a vast supply of nos Buick parts since back in the 70's.  I was once a friendly competitor with Dick Boyer when Skip was little more than a teenager.  That said, whatever color Skip is making them I would bet my bottom dollar is correct.  As to coloration, the camera taking the picture or the computer they're loaded onto can definitely vary the color.  I wouldn't be surprised if Bob wasn't getting those he sells from Skip.  If you go to the Hershey flea market in October be sure to look Skip up in the Chocolate field.  He's a great guy.

[neil morse]

I have a Super, but I unfortunately don't have any extra tail lights, grungy or otherwise.  I also wondered about whether Boyer was the source of the repros being sold by Bob's, but the significant price difference makes that seem unlikely.  On the other hand, it also seems unlikely that there would be two different sources for such an obscure item.  Who knows?  Thanks for the background on Skip and his dad -- very interesting.  I was also thinking about the variation in color from digital photos.  Actually, the color in the photo from Bob's catalog is not too different from the photo posted by Grandpa, so they might be closer than they appear.

[neil morse]

This has probably been beaten to death, but I uncovered another piece of "evidence" concerning these "difussers" which I figured might interest the people who have participated in this discussion.  I ordered the reproductions from Bob's (figuring that they would help my turn signals to show up, whether they are the proper color or not).  Today, I installed them.  On one side, a piece of the (presumably) original difusser was still there.  This was part of the base, and was sandwiched between two pieces of metal and protected from the sun (but not from the heat).  As you can see from the photo, it is not quite "clear," but almost -- just a slight tinge of yellow.