H-4 Headlight bulbs

[deemsriddle]

I have a 1971 914 with H-4 headlights. Also, I am restoring a 1971 911T coupe with H4 headlights. Last fall I took my 914 down to the Chattanooga Motorcar Festival. It was before daybreak and I was horrified how pitiful the headlights were. I know that I will need to install relays and have installed them in my 911. What are my options to bring my headlights up to 2025 standards and make it safe for this 78 year old man to drive his cars safely? The adaptive lights on my 2012 Carrera S have spoiled me. I am not looking for adaptive lights, just headlights that I can reasonably see what's ahead of me.

[Dave at Pelican Parts]

Look into 7" round LED headlights. They're a common upgrade for, among others, Jeeps. Generally power consumption is low enough to not overstress the ignition switch and wiring.

If you want to keep the H4s, you can go with higher-wattage bulbs but you will definitely want at least one relay to take most of the load off the ignition switch. There are a number of ways to put a relay into this system, so detailed descriptions would be pretty long.

You can add a relay basically at each light. Hook up a ground and the old headlight power wire to the switching terminals of the relay, hook the output of the relay to the power connection of the light, and run a new fat wire with a fuse from the battery to the power connection of each relay.

You could do as above, but with one relay. Hook it into the circuit for only one headlight, and then run the power to both headlights.

You could do either of the above with a separate relay for high beam and for low beam.

You could put a single relay between the ignition switch and the fuse for each high beam. You'd still want a good-sized wire with a fuse run to the power terminal of the relay.

You could do the above, but with one relay for high beam and one relay for low beam. Those are run by separate fuses on the fuse panel.

The exact setup depends on where you want to mount the relays, how much you trust the stock wiring, if you want both low-beam and high-beam loads offloaded from the ignition switch, and so on.

--DD

[Cairo94507]

I have these in my '71 914-6 and they are perfect. Fit like stock and are are very nice at nighttime. Makes stock headlights look like candles.

https://vintagecarleds.com/shop/7-inch/vc5000-ultimate-7-inch-kit/