Headlights?

[chief914]

I just found that my high beam is junk on the passenger side. I had H4 halogens, but before replacing my bad one I thought I'd bounce it off this board to see if anyone is doing anything "new" with headlights? HIDs...Xenons......Any cool suggestions???

[Tonyakavw]

I haven't actually done it, but I've been thinking of a couple unusual ideas. One was that there are some very small HID lights that you can get now and I was thinking it would be interesting to put them where the turn signals are, and fabricate a hood that has no space for the popups.

Another idea is to use LEDs... Lumileds (a spinoff of HP I think) makes super high intensity LEDs called the Luxeon. They have recently developed a 5 watt LED, which is the most powerful to date. White LEDs as far as I know are a bit more efficient than their incandescent counterpart, and it would be interesting to make an array of say 10 of these per side and use them as headlamps. It's a wild idea, but I think eventually someone will do it. They are already using red LEDs for brake lights and yellow for turn signals... I think these Luxeon's are very pricey though. Maybe $30 a piece? Maybe less in quantity.

-Tony Long
--------------
1973 914 AKA VW

[Dave at Pelican Parts]

First, check your fuses. There are four fuses for the headlights--left high beam, left low beam, right high beam, right low beam. You might have simply popped one fuse.

Second, real HID setups are seriously expensive. You not only have the bulbs, but you also need a transformer to supply the voltage that the HID bulbs need. You'll have to find a place to mount that. Hopefully the wires are good and flexible, because of course our headlights move quite a bit.

You can get "HID-look" bulbs for the H4 "euro" headlights. They're just blue-ish bulbs and don't give you the massive light output of real HIDs.

Hope this helps.

--DD

[AaronM]

When was the last time you aimed the headlights? It's amazing how often the simple fix of aiming the lights is neglected. Having the lights aimed properly makes a huge difference, it's like having twice the light output when compared with poorly aimed bulbs. Putting more wattage into badly aimed lights may make things better for you but it's a real pain for oncoming drivers.

There should be some adjustment screws around the lights to allow left/right and up/down aiming, check the manual for which screws do what.

To aim them, I usually take a car with a known good beam pattern and park it about 20-30 foot from my garage door with its lights on. Then I mark the the outline of the brightest portion of the beam with chalk on the garage door, and I mark the place where I parked the car with chalk on the driveway. Next I move the car whose lights I'm adjusting to the same spot that the known good car was sitting and I turn its lights on. Then I adjust the lights until the brightest part of the beam matches up with the marks on the garage door. A garden hose will wash off the chalk.

I've actually been quite impressed with the headlights on my 914 and I'm just using your basic Wagner Halogen Sealed Beams.

Aaron

[Mark Henry]

HID is $500.! I'll get 2 sets. NOT!!

just yakked about this on the STF

http://shoptalkforums.com/bbs/NonCGI/Forum18/HTML/003708.html

[Rog914]

Just bought a pair real HID lights for $600 (on sale,$800 off sale). Have not installed them yet as the 914 sleeps for the winter. But looking forward to putting them on and seeing the difference.




Ralph
74 2.0

[philinjax]

Check out......... http://www.hids4less.com/www/index.asp


Phil

[roadtrp204]

Real HIDs are illegal in cars not originally equiped. Not that would stop me but after doing some research on them they do not work in reflector that are parallel to the filament. H4 and 9004 style lights are this way and will cause unwanted dispersment of the reflected light. The lights they will retrofit into are the seperate low/high beam style. In addition, the cars equipped with HIDs have a self levelling system so they will not be blinding to oncoming traffic. They are also a single bulb, no high beams included their startup time does not permit use as high beams. I have a complete set from a wrecked Mercedes S500, right side was $1100 left $1300 (this was the replacement cost for the ones I have). I need bulbs to make them work, those are a $100 a piece. I have an astigmatisism and super bright headlights cause me to not be able to see for a moment when passing by such a car head on, please take that into consideration. Headlights can be deadly if the proper research is not done. http://www.xenonlights.org This is the only place I found that did not recommend them for all styles of lights.

I copied this from the site I listed above to share the information as a precaution.

Can any car be converted to HID?
HID conversions can generally be installed into any car that uses a headlight design where the bulb can be replaced independently of the headlight assembly. Beam pattern correct HID conversions can only be done on headlights which use a bulb that satisfies all of the following conditions:

- The bulb is a single filament bulb (i.e., the low beams and high beams use separate bulbs)
- The bulb has a axial filament (i.e., the filament is parallel to the length of the bulb, rather than the width)
- The physical dimensions of the bulb are similar to the physical dimensions of the HID light source.


If your car has a dual filament bulb (low and high beams combined into one bulb), a conversion may still be possible, but it is probably not possible to correct the beam pattern. In addition, you will have to to give up your high beams. This is because HID is designed as a low beam only system. All HID systems in production use separate bulbs for low and high beams, with the high beams being standard halogen bulbs. Because of the startup time required for HID, it may be unsuitable in instances where you need to flash your high beams. All factory equipped HID systems use the dual bulb HID low/Halogen high configuration. We do not recommend or endorse a loss of high beam conversion, mainly due to the incorrect beam pattern that will result. An added drawback to a loss of high beam conversion is the fact that should the HID system fail for any reason (usually improper installation), you could be left with no lights at an inopportune time or place. While it is possible to perform a conversion and retain the high beams, this requires extensive modifications to your headlight housing or a custom headlight housing to be made. Both options are very expensive, but if professionally done, the conversion will have a corrected beam pattern. As a side note, any vendor that tells you a beam correct conversion can be done on a 9007, 9004, H4, or 9003 without custom headlight housings is either not being truthful with you, doesn't fully understand the technical issues, or hasn't actually tested it. It is interesting to note that combined low/high HID systems are currently in the prototype stages. The feat was accomplished by actually moving the HID light source back and forth inside the headlight assembly to alter the focal point from low to high beams.

As for cars that use a bulb with a transverse filament, while a conversion may be possible, the beam pattern results may be unpredictable due to the fact that HID light sources are only made with axial arc paths. Again, in this case, for a beam pattern correct conversion, extensive modifications will need to be made to the headlight housing or a custom housing made. Thus, we don't generally recommend axial filament conversions.

"it would be interesting to put them where the turn signals are"...

If the car ever has to be safety checked it probably wouldn't pass with the headlights in the turnsignal housing. There is a minimum height that they have to be set at. I'm not sure what it is anymore but you should check into it before eliminating the stock lights. A good idea for a track car though.

Dumb post, I have a slant nose front end with my turnsignals below the headlights. I just remembered not everyone else does. Doh!

[sreddock]

There are quite a lot of things sold as HID lamps these days. I don't know quite how some companies get away with it.

HID stands for High Intensity Discharge. It is an arc light triggered by thousands of volts. The light produced is a closer representation of daylight than halogen (which is not white at all). As there is more blue in HID lamps than we are used to (or you see in the car driving along side) they appear blue.

There are some people who sell halogne filament bulbs as HID lamps. Given that the D is discharge I can't see how you can legally sell a filament bulb and call it HID. Unless the small print says that HID means "Halogen Induced Daylight"... I have no idea of the light output of these lamps. In case it was not obvious I don't approve of the advertising techniques and won't waste my money on them.

There are a number of companies who sell high output lamps which use a different gas mix from the normal halogen. Allegedly these give more light than straight halogens. Never tried them myself.

You can also buy replacement round lamp units which are HID. These real HID units come with the ballasts and ignitors and are a real arc lamp. They work damn well. I've a factory set of HID lamps in the Subaru and they work well.

As mentioned above you can get kits which move the HID lamp to switch between hi & lo. The company making them is called something like belkin (but it isn't belkin...), but I can't find the web site. There is a picture of them working here: http://www.hidkits.com/products_bixenon.htm A snip at $700 US.

Personally, I'm going to use standard H4s with relays and wires sufficiently fat to make sure I really get 12V at the back of the bulb, which is the problem I have at the moment.

Cheers, Steve

[SteveStromberg]

Some lights like this? Give us a call here at PP. Steve

[sreddock]

Cool. Is it a hi-lo beam model?

And how much?

Steve

[scg]

People actually drive their 914's at NIGHT??????!!!!!

[kellzey]

Hey! On another note, I found 50 watt halogen bulbs that fit into the stock USA foglights ('70 to 74 models) without any adapters or modifications.

[Bleyseng]

OK Karl, where????


Geoff

[Dbelleperc]

Okay if you guys want to talk about xenon's this is the guy. I just order the X6024 for my 914 from http://www.sylvania.com/xenarc/x60246054.htm and they are 50 state legal DOT bull stuff and they come with and seperate highbeam 55 Watts. They also include a bridge which lets you use the D1R Xenons with the halogen high beams together which will produce 4-5 times the light from the standard 914 lights. The bulbs are the same fount on BMW's Porsche's and the other German cars. Make sure you do your research on a company before buying expensive xenon lights. FYI don't buy cheap Jap. Bulb coated Blue yes they even coat the real xenon blue now. I will let everyone know the steps for installing them in a 914 when I install them later.The whole system cost 499.00 plus free shipping. I will post picture when I get everything installed in about a week or two.

[kellzey]

http://www.vintagemotorspares.com/clientph/brmm4.nsf/supppages/hodge?OpenDocument&part=7

It's the 423H bulb