Headlight contacts

[Chris in CT]

A few years ago, I decided to get a new pair of 2 bulb headlights for my '29 roadster. These would replace the 30-31 headlights that had come with the car when I bought it. I was reasonably happy with my purchase, and noted that the three sprung contacts were perfectly aligned. I cut a concave shape into the flat-top feed connectors, set them in a 3-wire plug and never looked back. Lights worked perfectly.

Having worked on the car this winter in my basement, I noticed that both headlights were shorted when I worked the headlights. When I looked inside, I found that the red fiberboard holder for the three contacts had badly distorted, causing the sprung contacts to close together in the middle of the socket. It appears that the cause was excessive humidity, either causing the fiberboard to soften or to warp.

Why on earth don't the suppliers of these headlights use a phenolic resin material such as Micarta instead of vulcanized fiberboard? I know that many Model A'ers have dealt with this frustrating problem by wiring the headlights straight through, but this should not be a necessary solution to what is basically a simple, solvable problem.