It's not much but every couple of pounds helps.

I went to the junkyard today just to see what's new and what I could use. For some reason I decided to look at headlights and found 4 plastic headlights that hadn't turned yellow yet. I checked to make sure the elements weren't burnt out. Cost me $8 for the 4 lights. I'm not sure how much of a weight savings I did but I'm guessing one glass headlights was about the same as all 4 plastic lights. Maybe 2-3 pounds savings at the most but all off the front of the car.

My car doesn't sit out in the sun 12 months of the year so I'm not worried about the lights turning yellow. I have them wired up so all the elements light up when I turn the lights on. High and low beams at the same time so I can see down the return road for those late evening runs. It's not like I'll have any oncoming traffic where I need to dim my lights.

 

What car had the plastic lights?

 

Anything that uses the 4 rectangular headlight system. I started walking through all the GM's and found one high and one low beam in 2 different cars. Not a great start for the hundreds of GM's in the yard. I then crossed the yard into the Dodge products and found many of the dodges use plastic headlights for the high beams and I kept grabbing them until I had a bunch with clear lenses. I quickly went through the imports as many of them didn't use the 4 rectangular lights. Finally I got into the fords and found a couple more low beams in a couple of different cars. I had 4 of each that still had clear lenses that could pass for glass with no yellowing.

Because the self serve auto wrecker I go to is a recycling facility, none of the cars have batteries in them. Near the main building are some vehicles for sale that are still runners. I opened the hood of one to access the battery and used a headlight harness that I found when pulling headlights to check all the lights I found. A couple of the lights I pulled were burnt out so I tossed them and kept 2 good low and 2 good high beams.

From what I found, it looks like the factory uses plastic high beam headlights in a bunch of Dodge products. The low beams are harder to find. My guess it's people who replaced their burnt out headlight with a cheaper plastic one instead of a better glass one.

When they asked me what type of car they were from I said all of them. They're a generic 4 headlight system used on all makes. The price is all the same so she rang it up as imports.

On my tech tips page, I created a "how to remove weight" page many, many years ago. One of the suggestions is to use plastic headlights and I'm only now doing that

Tools required to pull headlights. A T15 screwdriver to remove bezels and a #2 philips screwdriver to remove the headlight retainer.