Don't try this at home

[wholberg]

I was taking my H5 headlight apart to get rid of the haze in the inside of the cover and I took a look at the dessicant package. On the back was a little window through which I could see little pink granules. I work in a laboratory and I immediately identified these as silica gel dessicant with a color indicator, pink means wet and blue means dry.

What we do in the lab is to throw the pink silica gel into an oven and cook the water out until they turn blue again and reuse them. So I set my toaster oven to 250 F, tossed the dessicant pack in and went outside to continue working on the car.

When I returned a few minutes later, I was greeted with the sight of a curled up dessicant pack. I immediately pulled it out of the toaster oven and, finding it was the consistency of rubber, bent it back flat while blowing on it to cool it down to room temperature (accompanied by much cursing and burning of fingers).

The good news is that the granules were now blue and I consider the dessicant regenerated.

The bad news is that, while I got it to fit back on the headlight, its dimensions are not exactly what they were beforehand and it probably does not seal to the headlight quite the same (the tube to the light was still kinda round though).

So now I will order some from Pelican and nurse my burned fingers. Don't let this happen to you!!

[john baldwin]

CAn see it's been a while since you posted this thread, but here goes!....What is the Pelican part number for the dessicant? Mine shows partially as 13....4 11 001 on the top...can't find anything in Pelican remotely like it...does the part allow for removal and refilling or is it a complete part?
By the way, the bulb in my H5 is a Sylvania HB1/9004CB DOT 12V...can't seem to determine what output this has...did you have something similar?
Thanks

[Early_S_Man]

Standard 9004 & H5 bulbs are 65W/45W.

[rokemester]

Dessicant packs must be sourced from Europe at a price premium last time I checked.