Kermit’s Lightbrows

I’m not usually a fan of light brows. However, I saw these, and I knew that I had to have them. Well, Kermit had to have them.

Fitting is reasonably straight forward, even if you’re scared of DIY modifications /cough/. It’s important to follow the instructions to the letter, and to assess what you’re doing before you start doing it.

The lightbrows can either be attached to the lamp via bodykit glue or the included self adhesive sticky pads. I chose the latter, primarily because Ka lamps can “go” (i.e. the seal breaks down) and you end up needing a new one.

First off, it’s important to clean the headlight to ensure that the adhesive pads will stick to the light properly. Once done, you need to gently and carefully price the headlight / wing seal back, and slip the brow into there. Once this is done, you can stick the brow on to the lamp, and gently encourage the rubber lip back over the brow edge.

Thanks to the right cock-up I made of it the first time (actually, they weren’t quite that bad, but they weren’t perfect and I’m a perfectionist!), the webmaster for www.kool-ka.com helped me /cough did it for me cough/ at the Ka Klub Chester Meet.

Now, does anybody think I should do something about the orange indicator lenses? You do? See here, and of course, we’ve already done something about the Ka’s side repeaters.

Worried about the headlamps at night?

As is Dervy’s usual want, it was necessary for me to make sure that the lightbrows didn’t interfere with the headlights. This is mainly because we drive the Ka quite a bit at night, or in adverse weather, and I really didn’t want to have any difficulties.

In order to do this, I chose a section of road with suitable road obstacles and signs, and fiddled about with a camera and the brows, to take these pictures.

Here’s the beam pattern without the brows fitted. Nothing unusual to note here, except that all road signs are clearly visible along with the speed bump.

The second picture shows the difference when the brows are fitted.

Can anybody actually tell any difference? I can, but I’ll detail this later – and I can’t tell the difference on the hoof.

Well, I couldn’t, so I boshed the headlamps to their lowest setting, so I could get a better idea of the beam pattern.

This first shot shows the lights lowered to level four, and no brows fitted.

Now there is a slight difference here. Note that the RAMP sign is slightly dimmer in the second shot?

With the brows fitted, the amount of light “leaked” above the level of dipped beam is less. Now this is both a good thing and a bad thing.

It’s a good thing because it reduces dazzle for oncoming drivers. It’s a bad thing, because it makes road signs a little harder to read when you have to use dipped beam.

I did take pictures of main beam, but I genuinely couldn’t spot any difference, and so I’ve not bothered to detail here!

One point to note is that the above pictures were taken with standard Ford lightbulbs – since these pictures were taken, I’ve invested in some Ford “Blue Vision” dipped headlight bulbs.

So You Want Some Brows?

ESP Designs were selling the brows, but they’re currently not showing on their website – so they’re very hard to get hold of. This means that the “Kermit look” is exclusive, although don’t worry – Kermit’s brows will be for sale at some point, because we’ve the Triple Morettes, so if you’re truly interested drop me a line...