Lighting device for vehicle

A lighting device for a vehicle includes a housing, an inner lens molded of a transparent colored material that is fitted to an opening portion of the housing; and an outer lens molded of a transparent colorless material; and a left-hand inner wall surface of the housing is dimensioned to have a length different from that of a right-hand inner wall surface of the housing. To prevent the presence of a colorless part of the inner wall surface from appearing to have a longer length, the foregoing colorless part of the inner wall surface is covered with an extension portion of the inner lens which comes in close contact with the inner wall surface. To improve the appearance of the lighting device, all surfaces associated with the inner lens, such as a part of the inner wall surface having a greater dimension a lower inner wall surface; and an upper inner wall surface are coated with the surface material that corresponds with a material coated on the extension portion of the inner lens.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
1. Field of the Invention 
The present invention relates generally to a lighting device for a vehicle. 
More particularly, the present invention relates to an improvement of a 
lighting device of the foregoing type which assures that appearance 
properties of the lighting device are not deteriorated. 
2. Background Art 
To facilitate understanding of the present invention, a typical 
conventional lighting device for a vehicle will be described below with 
reference to FIG. 3. 
On the assumption that the lighting device 90 is mounted on the left-hand 
side of the vehicle, a right-hand inner wall surface 92a of a housing 92 
is integrated with a device enclosure 91 for assembling, e.g., a headlamp 
thereon is dimensioned to have a length longer than that of a left-hand 
inner wall surface 92a so as to allow the contour of the housing 92 
located at a front turn portion of a vehicle body to match the contour of 
a corner portion of the vehicle body. 
With this construction, an inner lens 93 is fitted to an opening portion of 
the housing 92 and is positioned to be at a substantially right angle 
relative to the direction of forward movement of the vehicle, mainly for 
the purpose of determining light distribution properties of the lighting 
device 90. In addition, an outer lens 94 is disposed outside of the inner 
lens 93 which conforms to a contour of the vehicle body. To maintain 
harmony in appearance, a headlamp or the like is disposed together with 
the lighting device 90 on the device enclosure 91. A transparent colorless 
material is employed for molding the outer lens 94. Thus, the color of the 
light beam generated by the lighting device 90 is determined by a 
transparent colored material employed for molding the inner lens 93. In 
the drawing, reference numeral 95 designates a transparent colorless cover 
lens mounted on the vehicle body in such a manner as to allow the whole 
device enclosure 91 to be covered therewith so as to improve the aesthetic 
appearance of the integrated structure composed of the headlamp and the 
lighting device 90. 
With the lighting device 90 conventionally constructed in the 
above-described manner, since the transparent colorless material is 
employed for the outer lens 94, the presence of a part of the right-hand 
inner wall surface 92a can visually be seen through the outer lens 94 from 
the outside. To prevent the wall surface 92a from being visible through 
the cover 95, a measure is taken such that the right-hand inner wall 
surface 92a is lined with a film of vacuum-deposited aluminum or paint to 
form a reflective surface 96 thereover so as to improve the appearance 
properties of the lighting device 90. 
In FIG. 3, when the reflective surface 96 is formed only on a small part of 
the right-hand inner wall surface 92a in the vicinity of the device 
enclosure 91 including a housing or other lighting device such as a 
headlamp, a fog lamp or the like, it is necessary that the remaining part 
of the lighting device 90 exclusive of the reflective surface 96 be masked 
to prevent a film of vacuum-deposited aluminum or paint to form thereon. 
However, the masking step requires many manhours, and moreover, each 
masking operation is performed in a complicated manner. In addition, since 
the device enclosure 91 has a large surface area, a large quantity of gas 
is generated during the vacuum-depositing operation. Moreover, a long time 
is lost until a high degree of vacuum is developed to perform each 
vacuum-depositing operation. Consequently, the lighting device 90 is 
unavoidably fabricated at a low efficiency. 
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
The present invention has been made in consideration of the aforementioned 
background. 
An object of the present invention is to provide a lighting device for a 
vehicle which assures that no malfunction occurs; that appearance 
properties of the lighting device are not deteriorated due to the presence 
of a colorless surface area that is visually recognizable from the 
outside. 
Another object of the present invention is to provide a lighting device of 
the foregoing type which can be fabricated inexpensively. 
The present invention provides a lighting device for a vehicle including a 
housing configured to be coincident with that of the corner portion of a 
vehicle, a left-hand inner wall surface of the housing being dimensioned 
to have a length different from that of a right-hand inner wall surface of 
the housing, an inner lens molded of a transparent colored material and 
fitted to an opening portion of the housing and positioned at a 
substantially right angle relative to the direction of forward movement of 
the vehicle, and an outer lens molded of a transparent colorless material 
and disposed to conform with the contour of a vehicle body, wherein the 
inner lens includes an extension portion which extends along one of the 
inner wall surfaces that has a longer length while coming in close contact 
with the same, and the foremost end of the extension portion reaches a 
rear surface of the outer lens. 
To assure that the appearance properties of the lighting device are not 
deteriorated when viewed from the front side of the vehicle, it is 
recommended all surfaces associated with the inner lens, i.e., an inner 
wall surface having a longer length, a lower inner wall surface and an 
upper inner wall surface are lined with the same surface layer as the 
extension portion of the inner lens. 
Other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become 
apparent from a reading of the following description which has been made 
in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS 
The present invention will now be described in detail hereinafter with 
reference to the accompanying drawings which illustrate a few preferred 
embodiments thereof. 
FIG. 1 shows by way of a sectional plan view, the structure of a lighting 
device 1 for a vehicle constructed according to an embodiment of the 
present invention. In the shown case, the lighting device 1 is designed as 
part of a headlamp assembly and includes a housing 3 at the front turn 
portion of a vehicle body. The housing 3 of the lighting device 1 forms 
part of a device enclosure 2 integrated with a housing of another lighting 
device such as a headlamp, a fog lamp or the like (not shown). On the 
assumption that the lighting device 1 is mounted on the left-hand side of 
the vehicle body so as to allow the contour of the housing 3 to coincide 
with the contour of the corner portion of the vehicle body, a right-hand 
inner wall surface 3a is dimensioned to have a length longer than that of 
a left-hand inner wall surface 3b in the same manner as the conventional 
lighting device 90 described above with reference to FIG. 3. Similar to 
the conventional lighting device 90, a cover lens 6 is mounted on the 
lighting device 1 so as to allow the whole lighting device 1 to be covered 
therewith. 
An inner lens 4 molded of a transparent colored material and an outer lens 
5 molded of a transparent colorless synthetic resin are fitted to an 
opening portion of the housing 3, whereby the presence of a right-hand 
inner wall surface 3a can be seen through the outer lens 5 from the 
outside in the same manner as the conventional lighting device 90 of FIG. 
3. In contrast with the conventional lighting device 90 of FIG. 3, 
according to the present invention, the inner lens 4 includes an extension 
portion 4b in addition to a lens portion 4a which determines light 
distribution properties of the lighting device 1. The arrangement of the 
extension portion 4b along the right-hand inner wall surface 3a makes it 
possible to prevent the presence of the right-hand inner wall surface 3a 
from being directly seen through the outer lens 5 from the outside. 
The structure of the inner lens 4 will be described in more detail below. 
The lens portion 4a of the inner lens 4 is fitted to the opening portion of 
the housing 3 to be substantially at a right angle relative to the 
direction of forward movement the vehicle, i.e., the direction of 
radiating of the light beam generated by the lighting device 1. On the 
other hand, the extension portion 4b of the inner lens 4 extends in a 
forward direction toward the front end of the vehicle while coming in 
close contact with the right-hand wall surface 3a so that the foremost end 
of the extension portion 4b reaches the rear surface of the outer lens 5. 
With this construction, the whole area of the right-hand inner wall surface 
3a is covered with the extension member 4b, whereby the inner wall surface 
3a becomes less obvious when viewed through the transparent colorless 
outer lens 5. In addition, to assure that the lens portion 4a and the 
extension portion 4b appear to be stable within the lens 5, that a 
plurality of lens cuts are formed on the extension portion 4b in addition 
to a plurality of lens cuts that are likewise formed on the lens portion 
4a. 
The present invention has been described above with respect to an 
embodiment wherein the lighting device 1 is mounted on the left-hand side 
of the vehicle. Alternatively, the present invention may equally be 
applied to the case where it is mounted on the right-hand side of the 
vehicle. 
Next, a lighting device for a vehicle constructed according to another 
embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference 
to FIG. 2. In the preceding embodiment, the extension portion 4b is 
disposed only along the right-hand inner wall surface 3a of the housing 3. 
In contrast with the preceding embodiment, in the embodiment of FIG. 2, an 
extension portion 4c is disposed in such a manner that all inner wall 
surfaces associated with an inner lens 4, i.e., a left-hand inner wall 
surface 3a, a lower inner wall surface and an upper inner wall surface 
each visually recognizable through an outer lens 5 are coated along with 
the extension portion 4c. With this construction, the advantageous effects 
described in the preceding embodiment can be obtained with the lighting 
device 1. 
In each of the embodiments as mentioned above, the lighting device 1 has 
been described with respect to the case that the housing 3 is disposed at 
a part of the device enclosure 2. Alternatively, the present invention may 
equally be applied to the case that the whole device enclosure 2 is 
constructed with the housing 1. 
While the present invention has been described above with respect to two 
preferred embodiments thereof, it should of course be understood that the 
present invention should not be limited only to these embodiments but 
various changes or modifications may be made without any departure from 
the scope of the present invention as defined by the appended claims.