Its been a while I posted here. The car has been sitting in my car porch under covers and I have been tinkering with various bits that need to be installed. I started with the headlights. I shared a picture of the headlight lenses that I had washed and rinsed using some vinegar as per Zubada Aapa tip to bring back the shine in old glass. The headlight consists of three main parts..the lens, the reflector and the headlight ring. Lets start with the lens first as it is the most noticeable part of the headlight that determines its correctness for the car it is fitted to.
Over the years, I have dealt with so many variations from VW. and everytime I think I have seen them all, I come across another variation which is hard to explain and categorize. To complicate matters a tad more, you could also fit early Porsche headlight glass in place of the regular in a sloping headlamp.!!
I have a box full of lenses, pairs as well as singles from all years but in case of this oval I only had one correct lens.. While I was looking for it far and wide (they are not rare but being glass there is an element of risk in the shipping ) I spoke to Shahzeb and he produced from his stash an exact twin to complete the pair.
Bosch and Hella were joint OEM suppliers to VW. Hella was officially the OEM supplier of headlights from late 40's and Bosch came into the scene about early to mid 50's. Hella provided the bulk of headlights for beetles destined for the US market in the 50's. This goes well with the evidence of a Bosch headlight that remained on my Oval, which happens to be a European model, when I got it. (the other lens was missing and the reflector which tells the balance of the story was rusted beyond any hope of finding the readable markings in blue ink.)
While the early style sloping headlights were fitted to VW's till 1967 (1966 for the US market where the 1967 got upright headlamps) there were marked differences in the early and later lenses, rings and reflectors. The lenses on early cars were without beam benders (symmetrical) and had a VW logo cast in the eyebrow near the top. Bosch also had the unique flowing script font at the bottom of the lens. (replaced by bold script post 1960) There are also the roman numeral and alphabet combination cast into the lens. The presence of letters NL and A confirm that the lens is from mid 50's and later. Bosch and Hella did not introduce beam benders until early 1960's and then there were the many styles of lenses with slight variations. These differences were usually in the font, numbers at the bottom lip or the beam benders to the left or right for different drive formats. The several variations basically depend on the year and country of export.
The second difference is in the headlight ring and the position of the headlight adjustment screws. In early splits and Ovals, the correct position of the aiming screws is 9 and 12'o clock which changed to 5 and 7 o'clock in the later part of the 50's. Around 1963, the adjustment screws were moved to 2 and 7 o'clock positions.
