Low beams

Hi beams

Typically even though I drive my car everyday, I don't often take the time to go out for a nice cruise so I guess I miss the self reflection part of just cruising around and enjoying the car for what it is. Tonight was different though. I didn't have any deadline to make it on time to work or anything so I got to really just enjoy it and the amazing weather we've had recently. Coming back I realized the drastic difference between aftermarket l.e.d. headlights and the factory bulbs. I'm not sure how I even saw the road before hand. It's just one of those things that if you don't know, then you don't know.... So I decided to make this short post. Go ahead, upgrade all your lighting. It's okay to improve upon the safety aspects of these 50 year old cars! Converting back to sell is a simple 15 minute job and if wired up cautiously, doesn't have to modify the factory harness in any way whatsoever. The led bulbs aren't like the older style high wattage/amperage halogen bulbs requiring heavyduty wiring. The factory harness is more than adequate for the l.e.d. style. And after seeing those results, you can't fall back of the ignorance is bliss attitude anymore. Those high beams light up about an 1/8th of a mile down the road!!

 

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I love that Tee shirt.

 

I agree to a point. Visually, I like to retain the fluting in the glass. Hella H4 conversion housings are cool, but I hear the Retrobrites are way expensive.
I don't think I'll abandon my OSRAMs just yet.
What are you running?

 

I heard the same thing about the HID headlights on my wife’s car. Folks on that car forum made it sound like you couldn’t see the road 10 feet ahead, yet I never had any issues seeing, even in totally dark rural areas.

 

The headlights on my Olds seem just fine, I have the 80's "Halogen". I hate the look of the newer ones with the rings.

 

x2

 

Years ago (when they were still in print), Rod and Custom did an article about how to attach original T3 lenses to H4 halogen reflectors for the best of both worlds. This is a great use for burned out T3s.

https://www.motortrend.com/how-to/10...rs-conversion/

 

x3 on the 80's Halogen. I replaced my guide (yellow) headlights with a set of Halogens in 1988 in my 79 Calais, the brighter (white) was a game changer. Back then the blue Calais was my everyday driver, so night driving was all the time.

I still have not changed the same Halogen headlights (H6054) since then. Now that I mentioned that, one of them will croak tomorrow. I'll be ready, I always keep a spare in the trunk, I doubt these are readily available in parts stores.

 

Because I don't want to blind oncoming drivers.

 

I don't like driving at night, it's too dark.

 

I replaced the head lights on my 71 98 years ago with halogens from the parts store. They work great.

I don't know if I would try an LED kit. Are they available that aren't imported junk?

 

I am not driving on stock headlight bulbs. I am driving on halogen bulbs which are fine. I rarely drive the car at night. I don't like the look of these new lights and like the expense even less.

 

Same thing I thought when I saw the title for this thread.

I'm old.

 

I can't hardly see at night with the new Ferd pickup coming at me. My gosh, how many candle watts do you freaking need anyway. Those need a recall, they will blind.

 

Are people scared of the dark???

While it’s great that you have headlights bright enough to see into the next time zone, it’s too bad you have melted the retina of the approaching drivers.

Im amazed the DOT allows some of the headlights on new vehicles.

 

Thank you very much sir, your support and courtesy to fellow drivers is greatly appreciated.😀 #selfless/courteous

 

My thought exactly. This past winter when folks had headlights on during the drive home I was amazed at how many oncoming vehicles were blinding me. I initially thought the high beams were on but after so many cars with the same blinding lights I realized it was the low beams. What’s unbelievable is the passengers side headlights were blinding me. I thought there were regulations about light patterns but apparently I was wrong.

 

That’s one reason, among others that I like the E-Code light pattern. Keeps light away from oncoming traffic, better illumination of signs, both roadside and overhead, along with seemingly better “throw.” I like them better than U.S. DOT pattern.

…

 

Part of engineering is providing "enough." More is not always better. Young people tend to dismiss anything that was around before them as a mental coping of them not having much experience, thus, anything old, sucks, to them.

I'm a student of technological history and I enjoy old stuff because it often gives you more freedom to control it the way you want.

In this situation, halogens are enough.

 

I'm growing real tired of these folks driving around with the lights off a 747. Seems like the stupid bright bulbs are the quintessential upgrade for the young crowd. They have no regard for the other drivers on the road..

 

Doesn't need to be an upgrade -- what the factory supplies is plenty blinding, even (as noted above) on low-beam. Just another symptom of our narcissistic "me-first" ("I can see perfectly clearly; who cares if YOUR retinas are permanently seared?") culture.

 

It seems like the newer cars have dialed in the beams and are able to aim them so they aren't so bad, but I agree, they are still ridiculous.

The folks witg leveling kits in their trucks are the worst. Of course they never bother to adjust the lights down after.

 

I saw a commercial for a new flashlight that is actually lasers, it burns through stuff! Maybe we will start seeing people with that kind of upgrade on their headlights as well. Lord help us!!!

 

Welcome to Curmudgeon Alley! We have LED headlights because we, car enthusiasts, made them. They are more efficient because they only produce visible light so they use less electricity and produce less heat. Incandescent lamps produce light into the infrared and ultraviolet spectrum that we can't see so they use more electricity and produce more heat. You can even get LEDs in different spectrums of visible light which is how you get bluish, white, and yellowish headlights. The "halo" lights are just a stylish touch that I don't particularly care for, but I don't hate on those that do like them.

LED (Light Emitting Diode), and HID (High Intensity Discharge) lights are brighter and whiter than other types of headlights, but old fashioned incandescent sealed beam and halogen as well as LED and HID headlights can be blinding if they are adjusted wrong. The LEDs that I chose plug into the factory wiring, but they took a good deal of work to get installed properly. After adjusting them, they are not obnoxiously bright to oncoming traffic or searing on the back of the neck of drivers in front of me, but they make night driving much more pleasant because I can see more of the road in front of me. Like everything else in life, it's not always what you have, it's how you use it that is important.

 

Do you have a link to the LED kit you used? Looks like a pretty straight forward install.

 

Understood, sorry to have sounded like a crumudgeon however, in my old age my eyes have become quite sensitive to the bright as the sun headlights that are not adjusted correctly (as you noted). Also, I object to the use of colored LEDs on classic cars just as I object to the use of colored (anodized) chrome, and giant full car wraps of Conan the Barbarian on the side of a classic car, and sparkley - flashey LEDs behind the wheels and in the outer fender wells of classic cars, etc. etc. My statement in the previous post, just as these preceeding here was partially in jest yet verbalizing a personal preference which is probably not shared by many people any more so yes, I am probably a crumudgeon. And by the way, I do understand what LED and HID means. I think I learned about LEDs in 1977 while attending advanced avionics training for the Navy.

 

New 4pcs 5.75" inch LED Round Headlight Upgrade HI/LO Beam for Peterbilt 349 359 | eBayhttps://www.ebay.com/itm/193085053051

These are the lights I used, but I can assure you it was not an easy install. Most of the mounting bucket had to be cut away for the new light to fit. They fit the support panel quite well, but if you are not comfortable with cutting and fitting thin sheet metal, there are probably others that will fit better. I wanted a bolt-in fit, but once I started cutting to fit these, I was committed to finishing. I didn't get any pics of the install, but I can take a couple of what is left of the mounting bucket if you want. The only thing that was easy about it was plugging them in.

 

That is my point, we have these newer options for lighting because our generation (Boomers et all) created them to improve on what we had. Every generation tries to make advances and improvements to what they have. LEDs are not new but the ones we have today are far superior to what was available in '77. I have sensitive eyes as well due to a pain medication I was on for a while. Some people don't like putting new or updated items in classic cars and I get that. A pristine restoration is a beautiful site. But we can't ridicule improved options just because they are new.

 

Many years back, a friend let me take his newish '69 Mach-1 Mustang for an evening drive to see how effective his new high beam headlamps were. I took the Mustang out on some mostly deserted rural roads and turned on the high beams. I was absolutely amazed at the way they lit up the area in front of me but after several minutes of driving, the circuit breaker inside the headlight switch said that's enough and put me in the dark for several seconds until it reset. When I returned the car I asked him about the lights and he told me they are aircraft landing lights! Evidently they fit right in to the 5.75" buckets and hooked up to the stock wiring but must have required much more amps to provide that blinding brightness!

 

I'll jump in and say after driving home plenty of times after car cruises with original T3s in my car I finally went with normal looking LEDs. Huge difference. I only replaced the low beam outward lights for now since they are so expensive. Driving with the T3s was like driving with 1 candle, I'll take the safety of seeing more road forward and to the side. As we get older our night vision usually deteriorates.

 

True.

And there are two other problems that confound that.

Many LED headlights have high color temperature (above 4500 K). This means that the light output contains much more blue light than incandescents or halogens do.

And, although people claim they can see better with high color temperature lights, tests prove that they cannot. The reason is that our eyes can't focus the blue part of that light as well as we can focus the longer (yellower) wavelengths. That's why sharpshooters wear yellow eyeglasses--it improves their visual acuity by eliminating the blue component of ambient light. And this is why France mandated yellow headlights for about 60 years.

A second problem comes from the people who have to face these oncoming lights. Our pupils don't react much to blue light. They stay open and allow painful amounts of blue light to enter our eyes.

For these two reasons, don't buy LED headlights with color temperature above 4500 K.

If your headlight supplier can't tell you the color temperature of the headlights they sell, the lights are probably Chinesium and may have other problems too.

 

Amen, brother!

Much of the problem with dim headlights on our old cars occurs for two reasons. First, the factory wiring was marginal when the cars were assembled. Second, over time, the resistance of connectors in the long power supply circuits starts to increase. This results in low voltage at the headlight.

I've seen many of our classics with 11.5 volts at the headlight while the voltage at the horn relay is 14.1.

If the owner is OK with it, I hide Bosch relays that supply fused horn relay power directly to the headlights. The stock wire only needs to switch the relays. That gives voltage at the headlight of ~13.95 V

Physics tells us that incandescent light output is proportional to voltage to the 3.4 power. Increasing voltage from 11.5 to 13.95 results in 93% more light output from the T-3 (nearly double the light output).

If this seems impossible, calculate for yourself, (13.95/11.5)^3.4 = 1.93

So, measure the voltage at your T-3 or halogen with the engine running at highway rpm. If it's less than 13.5, you will notice the light increase if you add relays.