Euro Headlights

[ettore]

How are the headlights supposed to work?  Basically, all 4 lights have the highbeam and lowbeam filaments, contrary to what I originally believed.

So, I assume low-beam mode would be all (4) 55w filaments on and high-beam would be all (4) 60w filaments on (IE: turn the 55w filaments off)

[weba]

Original wiring is that outers act only as a lowbeams, and inner ones highbeam only.

But you can use H4 bulbs there also, so you can prettymuch wire them how you like, but heat and power requiments may fry stuff if you use stock wires and relays, hell you can actually get 4 lowbeams and 4 highbeams on same time but i really dont recommend that.

I have wired mine, so that the outer ones acts as a lowbeam And parking light, and all 4 use the highbeam mode. Offcourse i redid all wiring and relays to get more out of them and prevent melting down places.  

[ettore]

Well, in the infinite wisdom of me, I never checked if I got the headlight wiring harness; I don't have it now.

As a result, I need to rewire everything anyways, so I just wanted to check.

I will likely run the inside lowbeams in "DRL" low-volt mode.  All 4 lowbeams for "lowbeam" and all 4 highbeams for "highbeam".  Since all 4 chassis are the same, they can obviously handle the heat so I am not worried.  As well, they have no plastic.

[weba]

(ettore @ Aug. 03 2006,10:10)Q
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ESince all 4 chassis are the same, they can obviously handle the heat so I am not worried.  As well, they have no plastic.
They could, but you will fry something wires, relays or fuse atleast....

Stock wiring is not designed to run that many lights.

I suggest you to redo all the wiring from the relays to the lights, or get hole new relays like i did, you will get brighter lights thatway also.

[ettore]

Yes, I have no harness and, as stated, need to rewire everything.

2 relays is easily sufficient to run the 4 lights in highbeam mode (almost 1 relay if you calculate @ 14.4v that my car actually runs @).  1 could theoretically run all 4 lowbeams if I wasn't doing low-voltage DRLs.  However, my setup will require a lot of relays because of the low-voltage option anyways.

[Cliff8928]

I wouldn't run the inner lights in low-beam mode, because their beam pattern isn't designed for that use.  I would use the outer two for low and all 4 for high.  You will even see a significant improvement in the low-beam performance with just the two outers.

[ettore]

Note taken, thank you.  It hadn't even crossed my mind that the beam pattern might be sub-optimal.

[ettore]

After spending a few minutes in AutoCAD, I came up with this "design".  I am going to make it today, but if you see anything that is obviously wrong then let me know.



Click Here for a more legible DWG format (if you can view it).

[nicky gio88gt]

Hi, I'm trying to put euro lights on my 88'. My Question is can I just leave the lights the original way with the wiring? (Outers are lowbeam and inners are highbeams) And do I need an extra wire for the small light thats inside the lights, or does it run off the one socket with the 2 wires?

[ettore]

You can use your factory wiring, but you will need to cut off the ends because the Euro ones don't have the same style bulbs as your current headlights do.

The relay setup is mainly to get more light output out of the current lights.  As well, the "small light" is actually completely useless in north america, it has to be wired on it's own.

[ettore]

Again, I have just looked @ the light patterns and, as it seems, the integral reflector in the H4 bulbs (low filament it appears) causes the pattern to be either "flat" on the top portion of the pattern or "open".  So, it seems like lowbeams using both inner and outer lights is both realistic and might actually be useful seeing as how the pattern DOES differ (outer is more "centered" and the inner has very little light in the middle).

[Cliff8928]

You will only want to use the 55w filament for the low-beam operation, because of the shield covering one side of it.  Using the 60w filament will cause glare to oncoming drivers.

Is the beam pattern on the glass of the inner and outer lights the same?