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It's dark at night


DAVES89

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I must be getting old because when I drive on the highway at night the headlights just don't shine down the road like the used to. I did install Silver Stars, but they just don't seem bright enough anymore.

Has anyone come up with a simple plug and play light upgrade?

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I have the same problem Dave. Let me know if you come up with a good solution.

I don't use my headlights much, I try to avoid having to, but when I do they look like two spots on the pavement in front of the car compared to my Equinox. The Equinox and my s10 Blazer that seem to fill the roadway with light without bothering other drivers.

I've adjusted the headlights on my Reatta several different ways but it doesn't seem to make the lights fill the road very well on low beam. If I turn them on high beam so they fill the roadway with light other drivers start to flash their headlights at me. I've been thinking about adjusting the high beams down so the light fills the road better and doesn't bother other drivers. Then just keep the llights on high all the time. Think that would work?

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I think I will try that. It might be all I need as little as I drive at night. I'm afraid any high performance bulbs or headlight upgrades might overload the headlight switch and/or the wiring without installing a power relay and wiring to handle the extra amperage. It will be interesting to see what you come up with. Maybe one of our electrical wizards will be able to recommend something that will work. :D

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I wonder if the reason we think our lights are dim is because all the newer cars are so much brighter? I notice it more when driving on a main road with other cars than I do on a dark road by myself. Lots of street lights seem to make the lights dimmer too.

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I did a quick look at ebay. Lot's there. But what I would like is something that you can plug into the existing harness and install.

Prices there seem reasonable in comparison to times past when I looked.

I will still wait for input from others...

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Well, I will say the headlights on the Reatta are slightly lacking even to my (still) 20/20 vision. However, this is in comparison to current production vehicles that have HID and even LED lighting that is setup for higher output, different light wavelengths and wider coverage by virtue of the lens and reflector designs that are now prevalent.

I notice it less because I don't own a recent car to which I can compare it. Those of you with newer cars in addition to a Reatta (or 3) probably find it more pronounced a difference.

I think the only plug and play upgrade that will yield better output and not overload the original design of the switch and circuit will be LED. These are available now from GE and either Phillips or Sylvania (can't remember which presently) but are obscenely expensive for the form factor that fits the Reatta.

All other solutions will require a relay to isolate the current draw from the switch, excepting the late 90's and 91's that already had that at production.

I am not yet willing to drop $500 on LED headlights so there you have it. If the DOT approved commerically available retrofits get under $250 I might consider it, but a reduction in price by half is a ways off I expect.

Daniel had posted on some less costly LED lamps a while back. I looked at them on ebay and they are intriguing but personally I disliked the way they look (bubble array lens design). The GE units look like conventional sealed beams with faceted lenses so appear stock-ish at first glance.

KDirk

Edited by KDirk (see edit history)
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While thinking about adjusting my headlights down so I can run high beams all the time brings me to ask what might be considered a stupid question. How hard would it be to swap the wires in the plug that connects to the headlight bulb so the high beam would burn when you have the low beam selected and vice versa? Don't want to cut any wires.

The reason I ask is it would eliminate the high beam indicator light from glaring if I use the high beams all the time. The high beam indicator seems to be overly bright on the Reatta. I have it covered up now but it still shows up on the dash as a blue halo. It would be a little distracting for it to be on all the time at night.

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When I returned my Reatta status to "routinely driven" after having it stored for a number of years, one of the first things that I noticed was my perception of insufficient headlights. I was very spoiled by modern HID projector beams. Correcting this situation became one of my earliest mods. Online, I found a direct replacement, full glass enclosure with an internal projector lens specifically made for use with HID bulbs (i.e. correct focus of HID). The setup came complete with the bulb fixtures, bulbs and ballasts. While more $s than a pair of replacement SilverStars, still within reason for an experiment.

The setup exceeded expectations. So, was it worth the $s and effort? Well, compared to the excellent HID beams on my vette, not on par, BUT compared to the SilverStars that I had been running, MASSIVE improvement. The color is much whiter (6500K), which works well with my nighttime vision. The beam is NOT as tightly focused as on the vette, but the integrated projector lens inside the glass enclosure does do a better job than the SilverStar beams. I have NOT had a single instance of someone flashing high beams at me since the mod. I have also tested my own perception of being the oncoming car facing the HID setup I installed and I find them less glaring than MANY others on the road.

The biggest problem I ran into was sealing the rear of the units against moisture entry as when the Reatta headlights are down, the back points straight up and the entry point to the enclosure (i.e. opening into the glass envelope) is just about at the gap between the headlight door and the hood. The setup had rubber boots covering the bulb insertion area but obviously they were intended for more horizontal situations. To solve the issue, I finally covered over the area in the rubber boots where the wiring exited with RTV and that stopped the water entry. This is going to be an issue with ANY non-sealed beam setup used on the Reatta, so be aware. I did have to make some minor alterations to the original molded sheet metal housing as they proved insufficient for the larger non-sealed bulb neck at the back. It was a simple alteration to cut away a bit of the curved sheet metal to accommodate the new glass enclosure.

The setup I installed used 35W HID bulbs, so the factory wiring, which was also sized for 35W low beam bulbs, would likely have been adequate. However, as the headlight switch on the Reatta is a marginal design and NOS, when available, is astronomically priced, I added external relays and additional wiring to eliminate the headlight load from the headlight switch. I also swapped out ALL the rear 2057 incandescents for LED's to remove that load from the headlight switch as well (while vastly improving the look and brightness of the rear light array)

Is ANY of this easy? not really!. I am not aware of any easy plug and play solutions to the weak headlight design of the Reatta, BUT the situation can be significantly improved for a nominal expense and some DIY ingenuity and effort.

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a) had my eyes replaced in 1986

B) SilverStars are only rated for full output for 100 hours, they are really conventional bulbs that are being overdriven. Mine seem fine

c) have an 06 and a '12 and replaced both of those with Silverstars also

d) In the Jeep I am "way up there in the middle of the air" and not bothered by little cars, maybe there are just more suburban assault vehicles on the road.

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The only comment I can make on the headlight effectiveness is: check the actual voltage at the light. When I did the relay upgrade last year, the headlight bulbs (and aim) remained exactly the same as before, but the performance was enhanced a very noticeable amount. I was seriously overloading the switch with 80/100 E-code Hellas, and the light output changed from a yellowish tint to bright white. No doubt the HID conversions work well if made correctly with proper internal shielding to avoid glare for opposing traffic.

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Well, I will say the headlights on the Reatta are slightly lacking even to my (still) 20/20 vision. However, this is in comparison to current production vehicles that have HID and even LED lighting that is setup for higher output, different light wavelengths and wider coverage by virtue of the lens and reflector designs that are now prevalent.

I notice it less because I don't own a recent car to which I can compare it. Those of you with newer cars in addition to a Reatta (or 3) probably find it more pronounced a difference.

I think the only plug and play upgrade that will yield better output and not overload the original design of the switch and circuit will be LED. These are available now from GE and either Phillips or Sylvania (can't remember which presently) but are obscenely expensive for the form factor that fits the Reatta.

All other solutions will require a relay to isolate the current draw from the switch, excepting the late 90's and 91's that already had that at production.

I am not yet willing to drop $500 on LED headlights so there you have it. If the DOT approved commerically available retrofits get under $250 I might consider it, but a reduction in price by half is a ways off I expect.

Daniel had posted on some less costly LED lamps a while back. I looked at them on ebay and they are intriguing but personally I disliked the way they look (bubble array lens design). The GE units look like conventional sealed beams with faceted lenses so appear stock-ish at first glance.

KDirk

I looked at them on both e bay and Amazon and the Phillips looks the most like original. However at $495.00 a pair hard to pull the trigger.

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Daniel had posted on some less costly LED lamps a while back. I looked at them on ebay and they are intriguing but personally I disliked the way they look (bubble array lens design). The GE units look like conventional sealed beams with faceted lenses so appear stock-ish at first glance.

KDirk

thats the beauty of hidden headlights.noone sees them when they are off.

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The Truck-Lite LED lights are going for about $450/pr on amazon and other on-line sellers. There are also a few on ebay for around $360/pr. Power consumption is low enough that relay harnesses and such are no longer an issue. I think they would be fun to try, but I just don't drive my Reatta at night very much.

I would never advocate driving around with the brights on and aiming them downwards. Also not a fan of "HID conversion" hacks. Either the housing and optics are designed for HIDs or they aren't.

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I would never advocate driving around with the brights on and aiming them downwards...
What is your reasoning for being against it? It costs nothing to try. The high beams of my Reatta aren't as bright as the low beams on my Equinox. The Reatta high beams have a wider dispersion pattern than the low beams but as long as you adjust the light so it doesn't bother other drivers what would it hurt?
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What's needed here are the eye drops that dilate the pupils so the night vision is restored, thereby negating the need to invest heavily in lighting components.

The money saved can then be used to buy those very dark full coverage wrap-around sun glasses that will be required in the daytime to keep from burning off the retinas.

Problem solved! Your welcome.

John F.

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Handmedown-

I neglected to mention one other issue I had with the ones Daniel linked to a while back is that each "bubble" in the lens is a discrete LED. This leads to an arrangement in which the low beam apparently (by the sellers description) lights in a T Shaped pattern while the high beam illuminates all the LEDS. In other words, the LEDS used are all one light intensity and it internallly turns off some of them to achieve low beam level output.

Not only do I think this would look strange to oncoming traffic, but I question how good the dispersion pattern would be with a T shaped array of LEDs, each with a small convex lens in front of it. While these are less costly than other available LED retrofits, they are still too expensive for me to buy and be sorely disappointed with.

Put another way - much like brakes and my recent thoughts here on that subject - exterior lighting is a critical safety system and I just will not skimp or do bogus mods on something that important. I also will not throw a lot of money at something I'm not certain will satisfy my (admittedly) difficult standards until it is a proven solution. This prevents me from being the early adopter/alpha tester in many cases, but I have been burned enough times wasting coin on snake oil solutions that I don't do that stuff anymore. Live and learn.

KDirk

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What is your reasoning for being against it? It costs nothing to try. The high beams of my Reatta aren't as bright as the low beams on my Equinox. The Reatta high beams have a wider dispersion pattern than the low beams but as long as you adjust the light so it doesn't bother other drivers what would it hurt?

A proper headlight optical design must meet a much more complex set of requirements than simply height x width. There are specific areas that need to be brighter and others not so. And high beam patterns are very different than low beam patterns. The U.S. DOT has very specific requirements on this. Europeans also have a very specific set of requirements for the so-called "E-Code" lights - which are basically used everywhere outside the U.S.

The original Guide H6054s that were supplied in our Reattas were designed for 1970s-era regulations that barely allowed for halogen burners. In fact my 1978 Regal Turbo came with non-halogen 6054s. Halogen burners were only provided in new cars after the regulations changed for the 1979 model year. One of the first things I did to that car, way back in 1978, was to purchase "illegal" E-code halogen lights for it. So I've been playing with lights for a while...

In the intervening years since our Reattas were built, the headlight regulations have been modernized a bit. In particular, cars can now use a "VOL" pattern which is basically an E-Code pattern - without the upward tilt on the right for illuminating signs. The VOL lights on my newer cars are actually pretty nice. Unfortunately, I guess most consumer purchases of H6054 lights are based on lowest cost. So the manufacturers have not really been putting their best efforts into our form factor.

I've been told that one standout in the sealed beam H6054 space is the GE Nighthawk. It supposedly outperforms the Silverstars and even the Hella E-codes that I bought for my Reatta. I can't verify this from personal experience though, as I bought the Hellas instead.

I actually swapped the Guide lights back into my Reatta for the Portland show and judging. I've been thinking that rather than swap the Hellas back in, I might sell them on ebay and buy a set of the Truck-Lites. I have other pressing automotive expenses coming up though. And the Reatta rarely gets driven at night. So not a priority.

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Guest ensign83

In a fog lite post, someone mentioned using 50w 886 bulbs in the fogs, liked them, and had no circuit problems in 2 years.

I just did the same, and they help the low beams re peripheral and signage lighting IMO...

In fact, since my hidden lite mechanicals are shot and don't go up, when I forgot to raise them by hand last night for the commute home, I switched on the fogs until I could stop and raise the hiddens. But, I noticed I could see as well as with my low beams raised and on!

Not recommending this of course, and high beams are useless untill i raise the hiddens, but in a pinch....

Concur re our oem lites being dimmer when the roads are wet and it is raining.

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Guest ensign83
While thinking about adjusting my headlights down so I can run high beams all the time brings me to ask what might be considered a stupid question. How hard would it be to swap the wires in the plug that connects to the headlight bulb so the high beam would burn when you have the low beam selected and vice versa? Don't want to cut any wires. ..

I had a 90 restyle Trofeo, and heard some owners do that.

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In a fog lite post, someone mentioned using 50w 886 bulbs in the fogs, liked them, and had no circuit problems in 2 years.

I just did the same, and they help the low beams re peripheral and signage lighting IMO...

In fact, since my hidden lite mechanicals are shot and don't go up, when I forgot to raise them by hand last night for the commute home, I switched on the fogs until I could stop and raise the hiddens. But, I noticed I could see as well as with my low beams raised and on!

Not recommending this of course, and high beams are useless untill i raise the hiddens, but in a pinch....

Concur re our oem lites being dimmer when the roads are wet and it is raining.

i have 50 watt bulbs in mine too.id suggest getting rid of these useless fog lights and mounting 100 watt wide angle lights in their place[using a relay].btw i went and got glasses just for night driving a while ago.

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I wanted to improve my night vision so I decided to do a headlamp conversion so I could try different halogen bulbs. Two headlamps available are from Pilot and Hella- I got the Pilot and am not impressed with the plastic lense. Browsing about the internet I came upon Phillips new technology halogen bulbs, one Crystal Vision, and the other Extreme Vision. Both were products of the year in various european venues. Phillips products are available at Napa and K-Mart. K-Mart was closest and they only had the Crystal bulbs so that is what I got for $25 a pair. I had Silverstars and when they were first put in they looked more white then yellow, now they look yellow vs the white Crystal Vision. It also makes it look like I have additional fog lights- I do not know if that is the new headlamp or the bulb. When one drives you will see the fog light effect then a blob of light further on. Highbeams are impressive. So far so good.

On the picture the new stuff puts out the spray of white light while the Silverstars is just pretty much straight ahead. Also notice at the barn door that the beam is focused without any obnoxious glare.:mad:

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The above is an old post; still have the Phillips bulbs. Questioned the plastic of the Pilot headlamp housing but they look as good as new. If anyone wants a simple, cheap, and good HID plug and play setup I would highly recommend the Kensun brand. Typically under $50.00 for all sizes and colors on that longest river in South America website. I installed a set on my wife's PT cruiser and the most time spent was zip tying the ballast to the frame, truly plug and play.

Edited by johnemac (see edit history)
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Still thinking out loud here. What would be wrong in going out to Gibson's and looking at cars that have our size bulb that use the later HID? Any advice on what cars to look for?

At least then I can look at a HID conversion kit, as I tried calling Kensun and they did not sell a housing they would not recommend one or advise on a conversion kit.

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Didn't go to Gibson's. Picked up the phone and called a distributor for Truck lite and ordered a pair of the plug and play LED. Got a discounted price of $350.00 for the pair with free shipping. Should be here on Saturday.

When it came down to it, I will be doing a lot of night driving in the next three months and it is a safety issue.

Besides not to be a wise guy, but I have sold enough parts to pay for it anyway, so thanks guys...

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Dave, I will be interested in your assessment of these once installed. I'm not at the point where I need to upgrade for safety reasons, but could be persuaded just for the better performance if it is really there. Price is still to steep for me to do it for grins.

I'd add that you aren't likely to find much at Gibson's as HID lighting did not become common until well after the transition to composite headlamps in the US. I don't think HID lamps in a 6054 package were ever equipped as stock equipment on any vehicle domestically. Maybe in the EU as their auto lighting regulations were well ahead of ours for a time in the 80's 6054 HID retofit kits are a relatively recent development so any car that has them in a salvage yard would be one that was converted from sealed beam. I don't imagine there are many like that to be found just sitting around.

KDirk

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The website is a great thing. I first called a friend of mine and he said they use tape marks on the wall and that he would help me with aiming them. But then I went on the internet and found the "How to" and am ready when the bulbs come in. So I will put one bulb in and take a picture with the Silver star verses the LED and then install the other LED and take the picture.

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Sure. www.drivetrainamerica.com Their phone number is 888-382-2953

Part #2745c

The price on the website is $360.00 plus freight and I told the guy I saw it on ebay and wondered if I could get a better price. Ebay had it for $360.00 but free freight. He discounted it to $350.00 and included freight. He is located in Iowa and I am in Wisconsin so I knew I would get it in two days [which means it will be here Saturday].

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I got them installed. I first adjusted the aim on the silver stars. They were way off. I took some pictures of the "before." I then installed the Truck-lites. I readjusted the aim as these were a bit different.

I measured 30" off the ground for my horizontal and 22" off the hood emblem center for my verticals. I then adjusted both lights to be inside the lower right quadrant for my aim. I also had about 120 pounds in the trunk as that is about what I carry.

They are much brighter! [Pictures to follow].

However here is my problem.

When I push the "off" button on the headlight switch the lights turn off but do not retract. I tried pushing the light retract button but that didn't work either. What does happen is that while I was driving with the headlights up [but off] they suddenly retract. I switched out the headlight switch thinking maybe the off button wasn't as good as it should be. But it made no difference. The light turns off but won't retract.

The little amber indicator light on both the headlight switch and the light retract button are on but very dim.

I think a resistor is needed, but if so what resistance and then what wire do I put it on?

Edited by DAVES89 (see edit history)
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I installed them into the Black [89 coupe] as it is my winter Reatta. I scanned the post you liked me to, but I didn't see a resolution I could understand. Could you list what parts I need and a step by step of what I need to do [hopefully with pictures]?

I am at about 90 minutes with the car off and they have not retracted.

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I suspect the LED lights do not complete the ground path to allow the headlight module to retract the lights. That would be a bummer but I am sure it is solvable, likely with some form of relay to provide the ground path when the lights are off.

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