Good evening ...Was riding down these dark Fla back roads last night and was blowed away by how dim my lights were compared to newer cars. I turned on my bright lights just to fell like I was on the same page as them but still wasn't close as I wanted to be. Has anyone converted or bought a replacement bulb that compares or HD or led
Yes... but it'll be a few weeks, months before I can report how much better they are on the road As a "no way I'm driving the Electra on these salt choked, potholed New England roads" project I replaced the original sealed beams on the Electra with new units boasting brighter, wider, further illumination. They certainly look brighter against the back wall of the garage.
There's a way to get your halogens to be brighter, by getting more voltage to them with the use of relays. I'm not real good with electrical stuff but I have read a few articles IIRC in HRM and or Car Craft on how to upgrade the lights with the use of a relay. The relay is supposed to able the lights to have full power instead of diminished power from the route it travels to turn on the lights. Do an internet search and you should be able to find the info you need to upgrade your head lights electricity levels. If that isn't enough light, you will be setup for LED or other styles of lights to be powered. GL
Here is a whole kit with the relays that is supposed to make the lights brighter at all times. https://m.ebay.com/itm/5-3-4-H4-Hea...ht-System-Fix-Your-Dim-Lights-2-/162182826422
I had Loren Alexander (65GS.com) wire in the relay mods for my headlights (and several other things). Unfortunately, only about 11 volts make it to the bulbs in OEM wiring, and with the relays, you get a full 14 volts, and that 3 volts makes a tremendous difference of output of light. And the heat and amperage taken off the light switch is a very good thing to longevity of switch and wiring. The addition of relays, especially with a kit, is not that difficult, just takes a bit of time locating the run of the wires that you need to move from their stock locations and connections, to the new/relay connections.
Try these links, this question come up all the time. I did the low beams on my 67' years ago, well worth it. http://www.madelectrical.com/electricaltech/brighter-headlights.shtml http://www.madelectrical.com/catalog/rly-1.shtml
I've been working on this on my K1500, the relays and harness are sitting on the work bench right now. I still need to splice it all into the vehicle harness, which will begin in about an hour. Problems the "kit" sellers won't tell you about: 1. Headlamps are rated for "full" brightness at 12.8 volts. They will get brighter than that if you add more voltage, but the design brightness is achieved at 12.8. 2. Headlamps are rated for "full" lifespan at 13.2 volts. As a rough guide, if you increase the voltage 5--6% above that, you'll add 20% to the brightness, but you cut the service life of the lamps in half. Guys rewire the headlights using 12- or 10-gauge wire, and that's crazy. I'm hoping to reduce the voltage a bit from the 14.6 at the alternator by going to an existing power stud on the firewall of my vehicle (other cars use the big stud on the starter solenoid, or the horn relay as a junction block) and I'll be using mainly 16 gauge wire because I WANT a little bit of resistance in the new circuit. I just don't want the huge amount of resistance that's in the existing circuit. [Edit] Used 14 gauge wire because I didn't have any 16. [/Edit] 3. It's getting really hard to find sealed-beam headlights that aren't Chinese junk. It's getting really hard to find any automotive parts that aren't half-assed by the Communists and their Collaborators in this country. No promises on service life of Chinese headlamps compared to when they were made in North America. 4. ^^^ The same goes for the relays and wiring harnesses. An auto parts store (NAPA and Advance in my case) gets $15+ for a typical 5-pin "Bosch"-style relay, but they're junk relays from China, which may or may not have the voltage-spike suppressing resistor inside them. Amazon sells 5 relays with the harness and socket for $12, so you know they're junk...but at least they're inexpensive. 5. The original vehicle wiring has SELF RESETTING CIRCUIT BREAKERS for the headlights. You have a fault that trips the circuit breaker? As soon as it cools off, the headlights come back on. The headlights may flash on and off, but you're not TOTALLY in the dark, stranded. All the headlight relay kits come with fuses, that pop and are "done". This is insane. Even fusible links would be an upgrade from fuses, at least a fusible link doesn't pop instantly at the first sign of trouble. I will be using a pair of "Type 1" circuit breakers, one 10 amp for the low beams, one 15-amp for the high beams. If I need to go up in capacity from there, I can do that easily enough, although I expect those amperage ratings will be OK. [Edit] Temporarily installed 10- and 15-amp fuses in the low and high beam circuit respectively. That'll switch to self-resetting (Type 1) circuit breakers once they show up.[/Edit] 6. When I pulled the headlights out to look at them, the aluminized reflectors were in fairly poor condition. One had so little reflector left that when I shine a trouble light in the lens, I can see light all through the housing. The others were not that bad. Aside from voltage/amperage problems, don't forget that the lights themselves "wear out" even though the filaments still work. My truck has 14.6 volts at the alternator output stud, but the high beams are only getting high-11 volts (11.8 if I remember right) and only a little more than that on the low-beams (12.1 or 12.2). Due to the OEM wiring, the low beam headlights shut off when the high beams are turned on. Adding a diode between the relays can allow the low beams to stay lit when the high beams are selected, and I'll do that, too--as soon as the diodes show up. Older cars run all four headlights on high beam, but not this truck. So, the challenge isn't to get ULTIMATE MAXIMUM VOLTAGE to the headlights, it's to get between 12.8 and 13.2, (or to knowingly sacrifice lamp life by providing more than 13.2 volts.) The relays take load off the headlight switch, but that defeats the safety of the built-in circuit breakers. Removing the headlight amperage load from the vehicle's interior wiring can improve brightness of the dash lamps and interior accessories, which is nice. [Edit] Re-tested low beam voltage after installing the relay upgrade. I now have 13.9 volts at the headlights--a bit more than I really wanted, but about a half-volt to three-quarters volt down from alternator output voltage. Probably should have used that 16-gauge wire from the power stud to the relay "inputs", after all.[/Edit]
This is a great thread. What about adding a reaistor inline ro lower voltage to headlights. This is where losing radio shack stinks. This thread is like taking a class in electricity. Thank you. Its a part I like. I have a new alrernator for my 70 GS. 120 amp. Brand new in box. Should i also add a circuit breaker inline? Thanks again Chris
I think I'm too lazy. It would work well, if the right value resistors are chosen, and if the resistors have a high-enough amperage capacity. On my truck, I would need them to handle 8 amps on low beam, and 10 amps high beam. Yup, I'd already have the diode wired in...if I could source a suitable diode locally. Self-resetting circuit breakers for the headlights are a great idea--assuming you aren't using the ones that came with your vehicle. A circuit breaker/fuse/fusible link in the alternator output is a poor idea. When/if the circuit opens, the voltage spike can kill the alternator diodes.
Anyone know of a source for a good quality relay/harness kit? I'm assuming anything for a 4 lamp A-body would work?
Nobody that I'm aware of makes a GOOD kit. There are multiple choices for kits, but none of them are likely to be GOOD. This is why I built my own. Nobody to blame but myself. The only difference between what I built, and what you'd need is the diode--I need one, you don't. That, and potentially the length of the wires.
So just run alteator straight up to battery? On headlights, im getting service manual out and design a system. Thanks.
USUALLY the alternator output is run to a junction block. Older cars used the horn relay. Newer cars often use the + post on the starter solenoid. From the junction block, the power is split to run various vehicle systems including charging the battery. Not much need for the service manual on an old A-body. You'll have separate wires for low beam and high beam at the headlight sockets, that is one wire powers all the low-beam lights, and one wire powers all the high-beam lights. The low-beam lights will have three terminals--a low beam filament, a high beam filament, and the ground wire. Note the color of the low and high beam wires. (On my truck low beam is tan, high beam is green.) Trace the low and high beam wires to the fender harness--on my truck, and very likely on your car, it's on the driver's side. It could be on the passenger side on other vehicles. Pull the low and high beam wires out of the bundle, cut both wires, and from there you splice in the two relays--one for low beam, one for high beam. The part of the wire leading to the headlights gets attached to the output wire of the relay--terminal 87 (NOT 87A, which isn't used in this application). The part of the wire leading to the headlight switch gets attached to the electromagnet coil, terminal 86. The other side of the electromagnet coil is grounded, terminal 85. I connected both relay grounds to the same ring terminal. I ran it to a screw holding one of the relays to the fender. Drilled a 1/8" hole in the fender, scraped a little paint around the hole, attached the pan head sheet-metal screw through the relay bracket, through a ring terminal grounding the coil, through a star washer to assure good contact, and into the drilled hole. All that remains is to find a suitable power source for the main power (terminal 30) into the relay. I went to a junction block on the firewall, but there are other places to tap into. I used two power supply wires, separately fused. A popped low-beam fuse still permits high beams--a single fuse kills both low and high beams. You could just install the wires directly to the relay using solder, or crimp connections. I don't recommend that. I used relay sockets that came with about a foot of wire attached, and then cut or connected to those wires depending on how long they needed to be. This is a reasonable web site to get started with--with caveats regarding tying the two power wires together, using circuit breakers instead of fuses, etc. http://www.rowand.net/Shop/Tech/WiringHeadlightRelays.htm I've got photos of all this, but I'm locked-out of my Yahoo account so I can't upload them. Yahoo/Aabaco is pissing me off.
Photos from my truck installation. Rotted sealed-beam reflectors--replaced defective headlights. Adding a connector makes it easy to return to stock configuration, too. Unplug relays, reconnect original wires--done. The power distribution center on my truck. One circuit breaker for low beam, one for high beam.
So, after reading this thread a few months ago I decided to take the plunge this spring and upgrade my headlight wiring. While I was at it I thought this would allow me to clean up the extra wires at my battery terminals. I started at eBay looking for headlight sockets with at least 14ga wires. While I was on eBay I also ordered several spools of 14ga wire in various colors with the intention of trying to duplicate the factory wiring colors wherever possible Finally I ordered a couple of male headlight plugs (only needed 1) because I envisioned making this relay setup easily bypassed in case things went south (no chopping on the original harness allowed). With this planned arrangement I can pull the one plug/socket that switches the high beam and low beam relays and reconnect the factory harness to the headlights and be back on the original system in about 3 min. Soooo I pulled out the old chopped up wire harness from my spares/donor car box to use as a template and made up a complete new headlight harness with my newly purchased sockets and wire. All connections were soldered, heat shrinked (shrunk?) and covered in nylon braiding for chaffing protection and to try an keep things a bit stealthy. I did vary from the factory harness in that instead of dual grounds going into the core support, I tied all the grounds back to a common point so I could ground all 4 headlights at my new master ground post. (pic 1) Next I went to Amazon and ordered up a piece of 12x12x.5 polyethylene, some relays with 12ga feeds, a couple of 20amp circuit breakers, and a pair of colored terminal posts for my power and ground distribution points. I cut off a piece about 2.5X12 from the square of poly and mounted everything to it with the intention of burying this in the driver side headlight bucket in front of the battery. (pic 2) As you can see my new positive power post is pretty busy. I've got dedicated fused feeds coming off it for the MSD, Electric Fuel pump, EFI throttle body, stereo amps and now the headlights as well. All fed through a single 4GA 50A inline maxi-fuse fed from the battery positive. While I was at it I added a 4ga ground wire from the battery negative to my new master ground post which also has a body ground on there along with the old dedicated ground I had ran from the fuel pump/stereo and now the headlight harness common ground. (pic 3) Final results are my headlights are noticeably brighter, it actually hurts your eyes to look at the generic sealed halogens now. My battery terminals are no longer littered with ring terminals so it looks much tidier than before. Realize that with some directed light (as in pic 3) you can see my relays and stuff but to just look down from the side of the car it's pretty hard to see any of it there in the shadows of the headlight bucket and battery. If you look around there are cheap 4 headlight relay harnesses available on eBay and Amazon but none of them mention what gauge wire is used and considering they are made in China and only cost about $30 there's no way the quality is much to talk about. I think the only other option I really found was to try stringing a couple of the quality premade 2 headlight harnesses (ie. Painless) together but that would get pricey. Not that doing it my way was any cheaper and it required me to do all the work. That said at least this way I know it's all done right. BTW If I shorten the life of the bulbs with the increased voltage, so be it. I can afford to replace the halogens every 7-10 years or so based on how much I actually use them.
I was wondering if anyone has used this kit.I'm thinking about buying one for my 72 skylark ,the price seems to be responsible.
