Lighting device for vehicle

Abstract: A lighting device (1) for a vehicle includes a housing (3), an inner lens (4) molded of a transparent colored material and fitted to an opening portion of the housing, and an outer lens (5) molded of a transparent colorless material, and a left-hand inner wall surface (3b) of the housing is dimensioned to have a length different from that of a right-hand inner wall surface (3a). To prevent the presence of a colorless part of the inner wall surface having a longer length from being visually recognized through the outer lens from the outside, the foregoing colorless part of the inner wall surface is covered with an extension portion (4b) of the inner lens which comes in close contact with the inner wall surface. To increase the advantageous effects obtainable from the lighting device, it is desirable that all surfaces associated with the inner lens (4), i.e., a part of the inner wall surface having a longer length (4c), a lower inner wall surface and an upper inner wall surface may be lined with the same surface layer as the extension portion of the inner lens.

Description: 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 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 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 the front turn portion of a vehicle body to match with 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 with an attitude orienting at a substantially right angle relative to the direction of running 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 while extending in conformity with the contour of the vehicle body. To maintain the appearance harmony with a headlamp or the like 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 93, the presence of a part of the right-hand inner wall surface 92a between the inner lens 93 and the outer lens 94 can visually be recognized through the outer lens 93 from the outside. To assure that anybody does not feel some uneasiness due to the presence of the colorless surface area at the time of the foregoing visual recognizing, 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 so as to improve the appearance properties of the lighting device 90. 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 of 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 is masked with a certain material so as not allow it to be lined with a film of vacuum-deposited aluminum or paint. 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, and moreover, a long time is taken as an idling time until a high degree of vacuum enough to perform each vacuum-depositing operation is reached. Consequently, the lighting device 90 is unavoidably fabricated at a low efficiency. US-A-4,849,861 discloses a different type of a lighting device in which the inner lens is colorless whereas the outer lens is red and the inner lens has an extension forming a reflector and being arranged at an acute angle above a horizontal partition wall surface of the lighting device. 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 there does not arise a malfunction that appearance properties of the lighting device are deteriorated due to the presence of a colorless surface area 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 at an inexpensive cost. The present invention provides a lighting device for a vehicle including a housing designed to have a configure 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 same, an inner lens molded of a transparent colored material and fitted to an opening portion of the housing with an attitude orienting at a substantially right angle relative to the direction of running of the vehicle, and an outer lens molded of a transparent colorless material and disposed in conformity with the contour of a vehicle body, wherein the inner lens includes an extension portion which extends along one of the inner wall surfaces while coming in close contact with said wall surface, 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 it is visually observed from the front side of the vehicle, it is recommendable that all surfaces associated with the inner lens, i.e., an inner wall surface, a lower inner wall surface and an upper inner wall surface are lined with said extension portion of said inner lens to form a surface layer on said wall surfaces. Other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from reading of the following description which has been made in conjunction with the accompanying drawings. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS The present invention is illustrated in the following drawings in which: Fig. 1 is a fragmentary sectional plan view of a vehicle body, particularly showing the structure of a lighting device for a vehicle constructed according to an embodiment of the present invention; Fig. 2 is a fragmentary perspective view of a lighting device for a vehicle constructed according to another embodiment of the present invention, particularly showing an essential part constituting the lighting device; and Fig. 3 is a fragmentary sectional view of a vehicle body similar to Fig. 1, particularly showing the structure of a conventional lighting device for a vehicle. 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 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 other 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 visually be recognized by any one through the outer lens 5 from the outside in the same manner as the conventional lighting device 90. In contrast with the conventional lighting device 90, according to the present invention, the inner lens 4 includes an extension portion 4b in addition to a lens portion 4a serving to determine 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 visually recognized by anyone 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 with an attitude orienting at a substantially right angle relative to the direction of running of the vehicle, i.e., the direction of irradiating 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 the forward direction while coming in close contact with the right-hand wall surface 3a until 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 there does not arise a malfunction that anyone feels some uneasiness attributable to the presence of the colorless surface when he visually observes the right-hand wall surface 3a through the transparent colorless outer lens 5. In addition, to assure that he feels stable integral arrangement of the lens portion 4a and the extension portion 4b at the time of the foregoing visual observation, it is recommendable that a plurality of lens cuts are formed on the extension portion 4b in addition to a plurality of lens cuts likewise formed on the lens portion 4a. The present invention has been described above with respect to the 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 that 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 4c is disposed only along the right-hand inner wall surface 3a of the housing 3. In contrast with the preceding embodiment, in this embodiment, 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 lined with the extension portion 4c. With this construction, the advantageous effects as mentioned 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 above 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 change or modification may be made without any departure from the scope of the present invention as defined by the appended claims.

Claims: In a lighting device (1) for a vehicle including a housing (3) designed to have a configure coincident with that of the corner portion of a vehicle body, a left-hand inner wall surface (3a or 3b) of said housing (3) being dimensioned to have a length different from that of a right-hand inner wall surface (3b or 3a) of the same, an inner lens (4) molded of a transparent colored material and fitted to an opening portion of said housing with an attitude orienting at a substantially right angle relative to the direction of running of said vehicle, and an outer lens (5) molded of a transparent colorless material and disposed in conformity with the contour of a vehicle body, characterized in that said inner lens includes an extension portion (4b) which extends along one of said left-hand and right-hand inner wall surfaces while coming in close contact with said wall surface, and the foremost end of said extension portion reaches a rear surface of said outer lens. The lighting device according to claim 1, wherein all surfaces associated with said inner lens (4), i.e., said one inner wall surface, a lower inner wall surface and an upper inner wall surface are lined with said extension portion (4c) of said inner lens (4) to form a surface layer on said wall surfaces.

Inventors: ISHIKAWA TAKESHI, KOJIMA SHINICHI, NAGASAWA SATOSHI, ISHIKAWA, TAKESHI, KOJIMA, SHINICHI, NAGASAWA, SATOSHI
Applicants: STANLEY ELECTRIC CO LTD, STANLEY ELECTRIC CO., LTD.
Application year: 1993
Main classification: B60Q1
IPC codes: F21S8, B60Q1, F21V17, F21V5