Just curious. On the exterior of the headlight lens'. There are some protrusions that look like littles nipples. Does anyone know what they're for?

 

im quite curious myself........

 

I know what you're talking about. Never gave much thought to it, until now. The whole nipple deal... just had to post. I'll look it up on the repair manual later. Maybe Daniel B. knows of the techical term ...

AnGe

 

I've heard this or read this or came to me in my dreams, but what I can recall, it has to do something with the manufacturing process and nothing to do with the functionality of the lights. Or a way for you to put the lights on the floor without scratching the cover? Just sharing what I heard somewhere.

 

how come men have nipples?

 

they're used for aiming the headlights. Some cars come with headlight aiming tools which, to my knowledge, are mainly made up of a suction cup and holes that the "nipples" are inserted into. Z's have these tools... don't know why the maxima didn't come with them

 

i thought they were used when manufacturing the glass.

 

if ya dont like em you can always shave them off, 97-99 dont have them, probably bc its plastic, not glass, people with headlight covers shave them flat to get the cover on

 

This is correct. Those "nipples" are properly called Headlight Aiming Pads and headlights which have them are Mechanically Aimable Headlamps.

Mechanically Aimable Headlamp
A headlamp having three pads on the lens forming a mechanical aiming plane used for laboratory photometric testing and for adjusting and inspecting the aim of the headlamp when installed on the vehicle ( SAE J1383,Jun. 90, Section 2.2.4).

Headlights lacking aiming pads may be aimed by using aiming devices which are built into the car ...

Vehicle Headlamp Aiming Device (VHAD)
A device, permanently installed on a motor vehicle and/or headlamp by the manufacturer of the vehicle, which indicates the horizontal and vertical aim of the headlamps (SAE J1735, Jan. 1995, Section 3.6) .

... or aiming devices which do not rely on aiming pads, such as ...

Optical Aim
A method of aiming a headlamp based upon measurement of certain characteristics of the beam pattern. Optical aim methods include Photometric Aim, Fractional Balance Aim and Image Processing Aim (SAE J1735, Jan. 1995, Section 3. 8).

All quoted text (in blue) was copied from http://www.etools.org/epg/hedlamp.html

 

I have a 97, and I have them. I do want to get rid of the upper one though. Does anyone know of a way to do it? I have a vinyl strip going across the top for the eyebrow look. Those really rather ruin the look though!!