The Proper Care and Feeding of Wingard Tail Light Lenses

Congratulations on your purchase of reproduction lenses for Wingard 1055 tail lights! These lenses should "freshen up" the appearance of your car and help it to look its best. However, there are a few quirks of which you should be aware.

Quirk #1
The lens is not supported underneath its mounting screws and if you over tighten them, the lens will break. In the picture notice the gap between the plastic lens and the base plate at either end of the fixture where the lens retaining screws go. There is a very large gap at the bottom of the fixture and a much smaller gap at the top. Not all the base plates are made this way but all of them display some gap.

Quirk #2
The indented area of the lens that allows access to the lens retaining screws is quite narrow. This means that you need to use a screwdriver with a narrow blade. If you use a screwdriver with a blade that is wider than the slot in the screw head it will scrape and gouge the plastic lens and may even crack it as you turn your screwdriver.

Quirk #3
The lens retaining screws use an archaic British thread form. You won't find them at your local auto parts or big box hardware store. SO DON'T LOSE YOUR SCREWS!!!! I do have a very limited number of screws available but they are pricey.

Quirk #4
These are mighty compact lights and as you can see from the picture there isn't a lot of space between the bulb and the lens. This means that bulb placement and wattage are both critically important in order to avoid damaging the lens with excessive heat. There are three things you need to check:

-- Confirm that you are using 1016 bulbs. The more common 1157 and 2057 bulbs consume 58% more wattage than the 1016 and wattage is directly related to heat, which is directly related to melted lenses!

-- Check the bulb socket. Time and corrosion have often taken a toll and many lights I've seen have had their sockets replaced. Unfortunately no one makes a replacement socket that just drops into place in a Wingard light so many of these "repairs" have created more problems than they cured.

-- Check that the lights are wired properly. If you accidentally reverse the wires to the bulb the brake light filament will burn when you turn the running lights on which will build a killer amount of heat remarkably quickly (see wattage note above).