Buying a turn-of-the-millennium Porsche is a gateway to a driving experience so sublime, you’re able to laugh off jokes about IMS bearings with a sort of elegantly condescending chuckle. However, as these cars age, some of them have developed a problem potentially more expensive than replacing the IMS bearing, and it has to do with headlamps. Specifically, if you use them too much, you might be facing a repair bill north of $4,000, depending on how you want to fix things.
The so-called “fried egg” headlights on the 996-generation 911 and 986 Boxster were Porsche’s first modern single-piece composite headlamp assemblies. Those lights you see on 993s? They’re actually a two-piece design with a separate lens and inner assembly. It was a necessary evolution, but as with many things, getting them right on the first try was tricky. To produce the required beam pattern for highway use, Porsche put a plastic Fresnel lens right in front of the low-beam bulb. However, halogen bulbs get hot. Really, really hot. Especially if some muppet’s retrofitted high-wattage bulbs, but standard bulbs get hot too. It’s not a huge problem when plastics sit relatively far away from the bulb, but when they sit up close, anyone who left a plastic toy near a central heating register as a child will know what eventually happens.
Yep, it’s possible to have refried eggs, because the inner lenses in these headlights can discolor and even burn through over time. It’s especially bad in cars with daytime running lights because the low beams are always lit up, but it still happens all over the place.
Here’s a post from a user on 986Forum demonstrating exactly how bad inner headlight lens burn-in can get. Beyond some serious browning, there are cracks and holes in this Boxster’s inner headlight lens.
Things aren’t much better across the pond, despite using different inner headlight lenses. This post from European Porsche forum pff.de shows burned inner lenses on fried egg headlights, along with the results of a refurbishment process. More on that later.
Believe it or not, I’ve experienced the pains of this phenomenon firsthand. You’re looking at one of the actual original headlights from my 986 Boxster after only about 68,000 miles of headlight use. Needless to say, these got swapped out for good units immediately, which ended up running a pretty penny.
See, there are effectively three ways to fix this issue. If you have a big enough oven, a delicate touch, and plenty of patience, you can order a set of replacement U.S.-spec inner lenses from Partworks for €232.70, or about $279 at current conversion rates. Unfortunately, not only is baking headlight apart a pain, mine were resealed at one point with something that wasn’t butyl.
Want to go the easy route? New halogen headlights retail for $2,238.99 each and are currently backordered. That means if both your inner lenses are blown through, you’d be looking at a bill of nearly $4,500 to replace both assemblies. That just isn’t economical when you consider what these cars go for, which leads to the third solution.
Why not go used? I managed to get two complete headlight assemblies with clear inner lenses from eBay Motors a couple of years ago for less than $2,000 Canadian. Again, not inexpensive, but certainly preferable to a proper heart attack bill. Still, if you use standard halogen bulbs, the inner lenses will only burn through again with time, right?
There are really three ways to prevent this, only two of which are available in America. The first is to upgrade to the Xenon Litronic headlights for a couple of bands. The light output’s great compared to the halogens, and the projector layout means no inner lens burnout, but good luck sourcing them with the amber indicators. The second is to retrofit your own bi-xenon or bi-LED projectors into the halogen housings. It’s a fiddly project, but one that yields great results. However, I went with the third option.
While LED bulbs in reflector housings historically haven’t been great, some have evolved enough to be TÜV-approved, meaning they’re certified and safe enough for the autobahn. In approved housings, these bulbs have nice, tight optics that won’t blind oncoming motorists and run cool enough on the front side to prevent lens burn. Porsche even sells its own set in Canada that’s approved for road use in fried egg housings, but they aren’t available in America yet.
It took a few bob, but I’ve long since fixed my refried eggs and hopefully prevented the issue from happening again in the future. Still, what a bizarre problem. Halogen composite headlights aren’t supposed to eat themselves, but it just sort of happens with these assemblies. Oh well, at least cooler bulbs finally exist now, and I doubt they’d be put out into the world if the lawyers were worried.
Top graphic images: Thomas Hundal
“While LED bulbs in reflector housings historically haven’t been great, some have evolved enough to be TÜV-approved, meaning they’re certified and safe enough for the autobahn.”
Actually, it’s Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt (KBA), not TÜV, that is responsible for approving the vehicles, aftermarket equipments, and such for sale and use on public roads in Germany. The KBA approval is usually automatically accepted in other European countries.
OSRAM and Philips have long list of vehicles with halogen headlamps approved for the LED bulb conversion kits. OSRAM also developed the “warmer” LED bulbs for the vintage cars such as Mercedes-Benz W116 S-Class.
My mum’s 2009 VW Polo has LED bulbs after waiting two years for the approval (December 2024 for H7 and March 2025 for H1). I also have to affix the KBA stickers on the headlamp housings and print out the certificate to put in the glove box.
Yawn…
Signed, BMW E61 owner.
My son just bought a 2005 C6 Corvette. 3 days after registering it, he clipped a deer. We had no idea the OEM headlights were that expensive. Not Porsche level expensive, but they are not cheap either. Thankfully the aftermarket has lots of options. You can also get outer lenses, or even buy one used in the wrong color, open it up and paint the inner to match, then put the lens back on. That will likely be our option. Of course we need to see what else is broken, the fender is pushed back and rubs the door. So the fiberglass and the mounts must be damaged somewhere. Deer suck!
this is why when looking at 996s you ALWAYS want one with litronic headlights unless you’re going to go fully custom
Can you bodge a couple of round sealed beams in there and cover the rest of the hole with a 3D printed filler panel?
Bodge is right!
Had to Google bands, never heard that use before.
What does it mean?
“A couple of bands” refers indirectly to wedding bands, but also is slang for $1,000 (the price of a wedding band). So I guess “a band” is like “a grand”.
Thanks
Completely new expression to me.
Back in 2014 I smacked the front of my CTSV into a guardrail bolted to a concrete wall in a parking structure spot I was pulling into. (I’m an idiot) It was bad enough to crack the factory HID lights with the pop out squirter.
Instead of $1700 to replace them, I switched them out to regular CTS headlights with simple yellow halogen bulbs. Zip tied the HID box back and good to go. $120.
I had an ’88 Saab 9000 that had beautiful Halogen headlamps. The lenses were glass, so melting wasn’t a concern. I aways worried about getting a pebble tossed up by the vehicle in front of me. Thankfully, it never happened in the three years I owned it.
Depo could make a killing by making a viable replacement. Charging even half of what Porsche does would likely be profitable.
My first 986 had this issue. After two passes with the 3M cataracts kit, I realized the damage was on the inside. I had an IMS failure on that car about 1000 miles into ownership, so I never fixed the eggs. My current 02’ S with just 30k miles was pristine and I immediately switched to some pricey Lucas LED bulbs, but they were too bright even after adjusting the beam and I got brights checked constantly. I swapped out some eBay cheapo’s I was running on my 951 and 968 and they are much better, so be careful which bulbs you choose. More expensive didn’t mean better in this case.
I’m happy with the LED headlights in my 2017 and 2018 Audis, but I expect there’s some expensive gremlin hiding behind them yet to be discovered.
I retrofitted my classic Mini with halogen headlights with LEDs supposedly made for halogen lenses, and have been really happy with them – and so far no one has blinked me for blinding them.
LEDs don’t like heat.
I was going to suggest retrofitting LEDs expecting a backlash from the commentariat decrying the poor projection pattern. Glad to read there ARE LED based solutions that won’t blind everyone else.
The road legal ones suck, though. Their output is bad, like halogens or sometimes worse because you’re losing CRI and they leave dark bands in the beam pattern. At least they don’t glare other drivers.
Bring it on commentariat! ;p
If by CRI you mean Color Rendering Index, I can’t imagine that it would be a factor. Dark bands would be possible in a badly designed projector system where the lens is focused on the chip, but you can get an image of the filament of the incandescent bulb just as easily. Anyway, it’s a design problem, not an underlying technology problem.
If an LED retrofitted into a tungsten halogen fixture is projecting bands, then the chip(s) are at the wrong location.
The dark bands are due to the shadows cast by LED bulbs top and bottom. The reflector bowl gets no light in those areas and those are translated into dark spots in the beam pattern. Sometimes these dark spots are in key parts of the beam. No LED can mimic the true 360 degree light output of an incandescent filament because you need a “post” to hold the chip to and transfer heat back the fan and that post can’t be infinitely thin. You can see these shadows here: https://i5.walmartimages.com/asr/0b2f7e67-74a3-4b65-972f-2b013574ebe2.f33c2739393a5db88eeddd7f0899709c.jpeg?odnHeight=768&odnWidth=768&odnBg=FFFFFF
CRI does play a big part. You can have as bright of a light as you want but if you can’t discern colors it’s still dangerous. Stop signs are red for a reason. Someone crouched on the side of the road may look like a plastic bag. Halogen bulbs have 100% CRI, LED bulbs are in the 70-80% range usually.
I have a 50 year old car with 7″ H4 reflectors. I have tried too many LED bulbs, ranging from generic Chinese to Osram and Philips. None, absolutely none of them equals a halogen. Yes, they might be brighter or legal and may not cause glare, but they compromise on some aspect, always. The dark spots are the biggest issue which I don’t think can ever be solved, it’s physics, unless the reflector is tailor made to work with LEDs.
Yes, the LED and the reflector have to be designed to work with each other. An LED that faces back towards the reflector would be ideal, much like the tungsten filaments that have a reflecting shroud over them. The problem is that you need a heat sink that can conduct the heat out of the fixture but not obscure the LED. Most, if not all, the cheap retrofits do not take that into account.
I haven’t seen any LEDs that have that bad of a CRI, although I suppose eventually the phosphors could burn out leaving a mostly blue and UV light. A lot of streetlights have been doing that.
I bought and installed some led bulbs from ‘Headlight Revolution’ because I was impressed with their extensive reviews on youtube.
When they arrived in the mail they did indeed appear to be high quality made units.
Vastly better than the incandescent bulbs, which they replaced (whichh were like driving with yellow candles) and no one in my family has gotten flashed when driving with them on either.
Every time I read an article about some esoteric design flaw on a Porsche that costs thousands of dollars to correct (great car except for this one minor issue that cost $4000 to fix), it dissuades me further from ever considering one. I don’t need that kind of financial paint with so little payoff.
*cough* Cadillac XLR taillights *cough*
Not just Porsches. Any engineering-forward company is using its early adopters for dogfooding.
This is correct though the European brands sold in the US at minimum are all guilty here.
When the Volvo XC90 1st came out there was lots of chatter about its “Thor” headlights…
At the time replacing just 1 of those Thor headlight units cost $2500, if you needed to replace the whole thing.
And checking FCPEuro… looks like they are still about that price ($2434.99 + tax I’m guessing)
https://www.fcpeuro.com/products/volvo-headlight-assembly-genuine-volvo-31655779
One of many reasons my taste in cars is going back in time. Even the finest H4 replaceable bulb standard size *glass* headlights from Cibie are only $200ish, and $75 Hellas work just fine. And they put out better light than this modern US-spec plastic capoo.
What’s “capoo”?
PS: I know the question mark is supposed to go inside the quote, but it never looks right that way.
Crappy poo.
I agree about quotation marks, but I fear the ghosts of English teachers past so I try to do it correctly. 🙂
It’s only since I’ve really gotten deep into middle age (and thus, temporaly distant from Professor Gillespie) that I even dare to do it my way aka the wrong way.
Thanks for clarifying. I should have been able to figure it out. 😉
My feeling is that if you’re quoting a question, the question mark goes in the quote. If you are questioning the quote, it goes outside.
If there were only one way to punctuate it, then there would not be any way to differentiate the two.
He said ” the president is a thumbsucker?”
vs
He said ” the president is a thumbsucker”?
I’ll blame my current confusion on not enough coffee, but thanks regardless Hugh. 🙂
A day without coffee is like a day without sunshine, and a night without coffee is like a night without sunshine.
LOL – I am still scared of Dr. Putnam (HS English teacher) rising from the grave and dope-slapping me. That dude was MEAN! And he didn’t really like me. I try not to think about the fact that the majority of my HS teachers have to be dead and buried by now. Sigh.
LOL – no worries – weird old Mainah slang.
Yeah, mine must all be long-gone by now too. Bless them… they really tried. 🙂
I have a tiny amount of burn starting to creep into my ’98 inner lenses. Once I have the budget, I’m planning on purchasing a kit that enables me to retrofit Panamera projectors inside the 986 housings, with the 4-dot DRL’s and everything. I’d keep my stock reflector indicators and foglamps, which I quite like because most of the full-custom LED headlight assemblies are absolutely hideous.
Isn’t the reflective coating on the reflector bowl also toast? If so, replacing just the fluted lenses is not enough.
Turn of the millennium German headlights are always going to fail in the most unexpected ways. The E39 has two massive Achilles heels: The height adjusters are made of plastic that gets brittle with age and heat and it takes just one pothole for the headlights to point straight down. Most of them are also perma-sealed so good luck getting in there. The other problem is that the reflective coating inside the projector bowl degrades with heat, so you can put the sun in there, no usable light will get out.
I think every old German car owner with a DIY lean will experience putting their headlights in the oven at least once.
And a very mad and confused wife as well
Torch’s idea to retrofit sealed beams into fancy new cars doesn’t seem so silly now, does it?
Nope, especially if they are the newer LED ones. If I had this issue, I’d be very tempted to just try to retrofit sealed beam LEDs into the stock housing.
Why don’t they just use glass? Glass should have a higher heat tolerance than plastic.
Are there any aftermarket or OE glass replacements?
It costs more, of course. That’s why they don’t use it.
If I’m paying for the Porsche name then I’m worth it.
LOL, yes, yes you are.
The Porsche tax is real.
Glass also weighs more.
A lot more.
For the amount that is in a headlight? When cars are ludicrously heavy today anyway? Who gives a shit?
When you can’t fill your Jeep’s tank all the way because of the weight of fuel, a couple extra pounds for glass headlights will make a difference.
If you are cutting things that close, you are an idiot.
Tell that to the engineers at Jeep who designed the 20 gallon fuel tank which could only be filled with 15 gallons….
Probably a bodge to get them into the next lower weight class for EPA purposes. Meaningless in the real world, just like a couple pounds of headlight glass. And fuel is heavy. Cost is the reason glass is nearly never used anymore.
Taking a good dump before getting in the thing would make just as much difference.
Probably also higher weight, depending on what structure was around the headlamp they might not have been able to keep glass in place. More likely though they figured plastic would survive through the warranty, and didn’t care past that.
Cars with these lights are 20 years old, and it’s not like every 996 or boxster I see has burned lenses. They’ve lasted well enough.
Aside from the burn in problem, they still have the same yellowing problem that all plastic headlights get. Plastic is just an inappropriate material for that application and always has been
Some cars had either plastic OR glass for the outer headlight lens depending on the market they were sold in. My Volvo 240 wagon is a U.S. car, so it came with plastic outer lenses in ’89 for the big ‘cinderblock’ lenses, but cinderblock 240s sold in Europe apparently had glass lenses. I gather that they can be swapped relatively easily, but I haven’t looked into what the Euro glass lenses cost yet (maybe eBay Sweden is worth a look?). 😉
I assume this might also be the case for some other U.S.-market cars that were also sold in Europe or Asia?
Pontiac 6000 has Bosch glass headlights altered for different bulbs.
My uncle worked on an Army Corps of Engineers project studying daytime headlight safety and was something of a headlights-on-all-the-time zealot, and after 35.000 miles, he had burned holes in his Boxster lenses by early 2000.
Lexan takes a hit from a kicked-up pebble at 70 mph better than a glass lens.
It’s under a plastic cover, so a kicked-up pebble won’t hit it 🙂
The part that is failing from the heat is inside another plastic cover. That one can be glass, while the outer cover can remain plastic.
That’s an interesting idea.
We have found the Icarus of headlight design.
That is seriously crazy. If halogen projectors are that deep in the four figures, I shudder to think what it might cost to replace the LED matrix headlights on my Opel.
This could also be the result of people running hotter/aftermarket bulbs.
Also, idk why anyone would pay those prices when you can just go on ebay/amazon and buy aftermarket headlight assemblies like this:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/187440870618
A little cheeseball, but way better than smoked headlights, and actual projectors.
My exact thought was, “Surely there are aftermarket assemblies that don’t cost that much…”
The hella bi xenon was built as a retrofit low and high beam in one assembly.
I hear they are focused on the LED version now though.
Hella has experimented with a rotating scrim for multiple light patterns.
Also you can still get housings for H4 sealed beam conversions.
Those look awful, especially the LED strip. Aftermarket headlights also have terrible beam patterns that send light everywhere but the road.
All these early 00’s German headlights (Hella mostly) were terrible. This isn’t people running higher wattage bulbs, it’s just bad design. The BMW E39 had similar issues with heat.
I admitted they were a little cheesy, but much better than blowing 2-3k on factory US spec garbage. And I promise they would put out decent light, especially compared to what factory stuff. Even a budget projector works pretty well compared to a regular reflector housing.
This failure mode, and the cost to fix it, is simply adding insult to injury with a headlight design that’s not great to begin with.
As I’ve shaken my gnarled, arthritic fist at many times before, the price of
everythingheadlight assemblies really curdles my milk.One neighbor paid about $2,300. to replace a headlight assembly in his only-several-year-old BMW 5-series GT thingy, and yesterday, another neighbor was quoted $1,500. to do the same for his tennish-year-old Mazda 3, supposedly because it has those swivelling/adjusting headlights (I didn’t even know those were a thing on old Mazda 3s). Both bills pale in comparison to the over $8,000. that it costs to replace a single laser headlight assembly from a late-model fancy Audi. If presented with a $8K bill to replace a failed headlight, I think that I’d cough up my pancreas.
I’m not exactly objective about this, since I don’t drive
at nightall that much anymore, nor am I out of town (without streetlights) on those rare occassions when I do. I’m just missing those days of $15. round sealed-beam replacements, with just a couple screws, from years ago. Sure, the light was dim and yellow, but it didn’t cost multiple mortgage payments to swap one.I had no idea this was an issue Thomas, thanks for edumacating me. 🙂
Look up lighting assemblies on Caddy XLRs. Lmao
Yes, I’ve read horror stories about those tail lights. 🙂 It’s all insane.
My GR86’s regular headlight unit—not the swivel upgrade—was $1800. I’m sure they could come up with better standard replacement light units than they had in the old days for cheap money, maybe just the aero lens covers would have to be replaced from wear and UV, but nobody has any interest in that and they’d be gigged by the IIHS for “poor” lighting over the $8k uppity option—the one where, if you really need that much light, you shouldn’t be driving—if they did.
Agreed: a cheaper, semi-standardized LED (maybe a couple/few sizes/shapes) that could be replaced separately from the (also replacable) clear plastic fairing (that could be any shape, have detailing, etc…) would be ideal. But of course, it’s in no manufacturer’s interest to do such a thing.
Reminds me of that article Jason wrote a while ago suggesting that multiple manufacturers ought to share a single four-cylinder engine design for better economies of scale, development savings, and longer-term parts support. One of Honda’s naturally-aspirated two-liters, or maybe Mazda’s in 2.0 – 2.5 liter form would be fine IMO… why would anyone complain about having a proven and durable Japanese degined/built engine in their entry-level Ford or Chevy? If anything, it’d make the Ford or Chevy more appealing. But again, it would never happen.
We’re in the middle of a huge transition to EVs, and AFAIK there’s no real sign of any standardization that would benefit customers down the road: each manufacturer has a different/unique and usually proprietary battery pack, motors, ECU, cooling system, software, etc… Little start-ups like Slate and maybe Telo are using some off-the-shelf components, which ought to make repairs later cheaper than they might otherwise be (assuming you can find the part from another/original source if the manufacturer goes under) but those vehicles will probably sell in relatively modest numbers, not reaching the critical mass (and market/third-party support) that might enable them to be truly affordable to maintain 20+ years after manufacture.
It’s all a bit depressing if I’m honest. 🙁
Oh, I forgot to mention (and only tangentially related to this discussion) but linked below are three snapshots of a wild, modded Honda Grom (I think) that I saw at the Japanese Classic Car Show in Long Beach, CA last weekend. I’ve no idea who made it or what it costs (probably more than a brand new Nissan Versa) but the third photo shows off its aftermarket LED headlight assembly that I’d like to think only cost a few hundred dollars.
https://imgur.com/a/yF1wqVX
Look at industrial European headlights for easy conversions.
Also for motorcycles.
Many are imported for off-road use.
Another solution for your Canadian-spec car would be to get some off-the-shelf nekkid LEDs with the lowest acceptable light output and put them in the grille to satisfy the daytime running light requirement (unneccessary on a bright-yellow car!) and use the actual headlights as little as possible.
I’ve seen LED bulbs with built-in projector lenses; I’ve always been curious to how well they work next to OEM and considered them for one of my motorcycles – but was concerned on their overall length being so much longer. They almost feel like they’re designed for this situation where you remove the internal lens and replace the bulb with its own projector.
They’re really bad. They have a very sharp cutoff (not good, not bad, some people like it), but no beam width at all. They also don’t work behind fluted lenses and to make things even worse, if you do have a clear lens, it probably has a shield in front of the bulb, so you can’t use these either. There are videos showing their performance vs real projectors or just leaving your headlights alone.