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Why not do this instead of Hella H4 Upgrade????


Guest Anonymous

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Guest Anonymous

I heard that the H4's don't fit as well as stock, and i was told that you could install a relay, and run new wires to your existing lights, and then run 100W lights in them.

Has anyone done this, wouldn't this acheive the same result as H4's minus the cost??

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Guest Anonymous

my02small.JPG

URL: http://www.zeebuck.com/02bc/

Most high/low euro-style headlights use an H4 bulb. The bulbs are available in different wattages, but the standard and legal wattage is 60/55, IIRC.

My Hella e-code headlights fit just like the sealed beams they replace, plus now I don't have to remove the grilles just to chage a burned out bulb.

E-code refers to the fact that they meet the european spec for lighting pattern. On the lens of the lamp you will see E1, E4, E12 etc, they all mean basically the same thing with the number referring to the country the lamp was certified in/for. All you have to make sure of is that the lamp is for driving on the right side of the road!

I think you would need to upgrade from the originally supplied sealed beam headlights to Hella, etc E-code headlights in order to use 100W bulbs - i'm not aware of a sealed beam that powerful and if it did exist, it would be a public menace.

Aside from wattage, the e-code headlights have a far superior beam pattern that puts more light on the road ahead where you need it and less up into other drivers' eyes (and less back-scatter into your eyes in the rain and fog, etc). Even with stock 60/55 wattage, the improvment in night driving from installing a set of Hella, Bosch or Cibie E-code lamps is nothing short of dramatic.

Don't confuse the e-code lamps with the Hella or Bosch "DOT" style replaceable bulb lamps out there - the DOTs are only a marginal improvement over a sealed beam since they still have the federally mandated crappy beam pattern! So you know what to avoid, the DOT lamps say DOT on the lens and have the little bumps on the lens for mechanical aiming.

regards,

Zenon

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Guest Anonymous

Zenon,

Thanks for the info on the lights,

I wonder if you could explain something to me. What is the difference between sealed beam and the H4? i mean are the lamps totally different, is it possible to put H4 lamps into the stock headlamps, or do i have to install the whole hella setup?

Thanks Again

Richard

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Guest Anonymous

my02small.JPG

URL: http://www.zeebuck.com/02bc/

all one, sealed unit. If the bulb burns out, you replace the whole deal.

The european-style units have a replaceable bulb mounted inside a lens/reflector assembly. Because the lens and reflector get reused, it makes better economic sense to make them more carefully and from better materials.

Perhaps I should clarify that, when I refer to lamp, I mean the whole fixture with a bulb in it. H4 is a type of bulb and is not a lamp fixture itself, just like a 100W bulb you put in a cieling fixture in your house - it is just the part that emits photons.

Bosch, Hella, Cibie and others make lamps that conform to the euro lighting codes but fit in the same mounts as the US-standard sealed beam lamps. So, upgrading your lights to e-code is basically the same effort as simply replacing sealed beam units.

Sealed beam headlamps are a US thing, mandated by the gov't because car owners and repair shops were not deemed competent to aim their headlights without a mechanical aid (and this was partly due to the vaguely defined hot spot of the gov't mandated light pattern).

Headlight designs were standardized to use six types of sealed beam lamps up until the late 80's, when aerodynamic, free-form lamps were permitted. Even then, the lighting patterns are still vague and the bulbs for the lamps are designed to have a tight fit into the lamp in order to preserve the aim between bulb replacements, since you can't really aim them without the tool.

Fortunately, the US standardization of lamps at least made replacement cheap and for us old car owners, the upgrade to the e-code lamps possible without having to replace the headlight mounting hardware.

regards,

Zenon

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