9006 lighting question (2 Viewers)

[CRUSHER450]

I am a little tired of the standard 9006 low beam bulbs on my 97 LX450 because the visibilty for night driving really stinks.

My question is, would I be able to run some higher wattage bulbs such as the 12v 80w and 100w I saw selling at my local auto shop without having to upgrade the wiring harness and worry about burning or melting any of the headlight components.

I have read on some previous post that running higher wattage bulbs can be bad.

If anyone can help with this question.

-J

 

[Gold Finger]

The wiring as standard on the 80 is barely adequate to run the standard lights because the gauge is very small and so offer too high a resistance resulting in poor light out put the higher the wattage the more of a problem this becomes. Chris Slee offers an upgraded harness which takes care of all this.

http://www.sleeoffroad.com/products/harness_main.htm

 

[RavenTai]

also look into HIR light bulbs, I got some on the last group buy, quite an improvement. was arround $100 for all 4 IIRC, high wat bulbs have short life spans.

there is a thread in the FAQ

 

[lowtops]

Crusher450,
Not trying to highjack thread but if someone could answer my question it might help you too.

With Slee's harness upgrade would the factory wattage bulbs be brighter? Or would you still need higher wattage bulbs to see a noticable difference?

Brad

 

[CRUSHER450]

Brad, not a problem at all. although I hope someone on tjis forum whose used a higher wattage bulb on the stock wiring would let me know how that works out.

Also, I think the answer to your question is no, the new harness will not improve on the brightness of your existing bulb as the bightness is based on wattage not the size of your wire harness.

-J

 

[phatairman]

Also, I think the answer to your question is no, the new harness will not improve on the brightness of your existing bulb as the bightness is based on wattage not the size of your wire harness.

I don't know about that b/c when I switched out the OEM harness with a Slee I noticed a big improvement.

 

[Rookie2]

Brad, not a problem at all. although I hope someone on tjis forum whose used a higher wattage bulb on the stock wiring would let me know how that works out.

Also, I think the answer to your question is no, the new harness will not improve on the brightness of your existing bulb as the bightness is based on wattage not the size of your wire harness.

-J

Someone on here has tried 100W & 80W bulbs with their stock wire, and I can't recalled exactly which part of the system they ended up frying.., the bulb housing or the wiring. I'd go ahead and mark this option off your list. If you want to run the higher bulbs, the first step is to upgrade the wiring.

In theory, the upgrade harniss should improve the output of the stock bulbs, but I don't think you'll notice any significant difference. You'll need the higher output bulbs if you want a noticeble difference.

I've got 80w and 100w hellas. I'm going to try the HIR's on the next group buy.


Rookie2

 

[LX_TREME]

Someone on here has tried 100W & 80W bulbs with their stock wire, and I can't recalled exactly which part of the system they ended up frying.., the bulb housing or the wiring. I'd go ahead and mark this option off your list. If you want to run the higher bulbs, the first step is to upgrade the wiring.
Rookie2

Thats me! Well i dont know if happened to someone else here.. melted the whole factory harness which im so If you want to upgrade to higher wattages I suggest get the headlight harness 1st otherwise you dont want end up like me.. Slee harness looks pretty good.
And if the hi-wattage still not enough bright for you, get True HID system -9006Low & 9005 Hi ohhh...no too bright now

Good Luck

 

[Bryan E.]

I got the HIR upgrade bulbs from Stern with the group buy that (? Cary ??) started. I think it's in the FAQ on lighting upgrades. It made a huge improvement. It puts out a lot more light but still draws the original amount of power so the wiring isn't overwelmed, and should have long life. I've not had any problems with these bulbs and would do this again in a heart beat. The previous owner must have put some high power bulbs in there that melted the socket that bulb screws into and that's giving me some problems and I'm trying to find a replacement black ring socket without replacing the whole light assembly. Anybody got one of these? 2 3/16" OD ??
Check out the FAQ and link to Stern lighting and they should be able to help you out.

 

[mot]

FAQ:

https://forum.ih8mud.com/showthread.php?t=11932

 

[Dusty]

my harness is fine w 80w bulbs

I have been using the 80w low beam hela bulbs on my stock lx450 harness for 6 months now without any problems. I have been on several road trips where i kept my lights on for 12+ hours continuously without a problem. When i first put them on i would get flassed a lot (not boobs but lights) so i turned them downwards a bit. I still get flassed on occasion at night but usually only if i overload the back with gear and point the nose up (gotta get some air bags). The 80w bulbs made a huge difference-i can see everything. Why go HID when you can 80w bulbs for less than $10 each?

 

[IdahoDoug]

I'm not sure what bulbs xtreme was using, or if his issue stemmed from another wiring problem, but I ran 80w low/100w high beams for 130,000 miles without a hitch. I'm a heavy high beam user as we live in a rural area and often travel at night due to stretching the weekends, etc. Not a problem, and the factory wiring harness is easily up to it. I've even left my high beams on while idling at various accident scenes and rescues - something I do not recommend.

I switched to the HIRs a year ago or so and they're WAY better than what I was running, and operate at lower power levels. The reason I switched was that bulb quality seemed to take a dive over the last 5 years, and I was replacing even premium Hella bulbs every 6-9 months. The HIRs should last years, so financially a good move.

DougM

 

[nakman]

Yes, like others have hinted.. the best upgrade is get the Slee harness then read up on Cary's "group buy" thread.. I'm so glad I got in on that one.. not for the couple bucks off the bulb price, but the difference is significant.

 

[RavenTai]

Also, I think the answer to your question is no, the new harness will not improve on the brightness of your existing bulb as the bightness is based on wattage not the size of your wire harness.

-J

That is not completely accurate, a wire carrying current has resistance, and this resistance goes down if the current is decreased or the length of the wire is decreased or the diameter of the wire is increased.

The bulb and wire could be thought of as resistors in series the less resistance of the wire the more voltage left for the bulb, Watts = Amps x Volts, if the total resistance of the circuit is decreased the amperage increases, again Watts = Amps x Volts

So a larger wire will improve the brightness of the bulb by increasing its wattage but the question is by how much? 15% or 0.0015%? As you increase the size of a wire diminishing returns kicks in. how much gain depends on how undersized the original was

Also there could be losses in the stock relay and switch.

The Slee harness is on my "to buy" list but I never have measured the volt drop of the stock harness, has anybody else? Might be good to know how much loss there is to gain back with an improved harness, everyone who has reported back has seen an improvement, would be nice to stick a number to that improvement.

Brightness can also be affected by efficiency, the HIR bulbs are not much higher in wattage to stock but much brighter as they turn more of that power into light instead of waste heat.

 

[lovetoski]

Crusher450,
Not trying to highjack thread but if someone could answer my question it might help you too.

With Slee's harness upgrade would the factory wattage bulbs be brighter? Or would you still need higher wattage bulbs to see a noticable difference?

Brad

According to the various light vendors (Cibie, Hella, etc) bulbs are pretty sensitive to voltage. An under wired stock harness creates resistance, which reduces voltage to the bulbs. It's pretty easy to measure the voltage at the battery, and at the bulb, and compare the two. There should be minimimal difference. The bigger the drop, the more an upgraded harness will help. (I thought it was noticable in both my 60 and 80, with stock bulbs.)

 

[cary]

Go through the faq that I wrote and you will see even with the HIR bulbs, the upgraded harness is a good idea. If memory serves me correctly a 1/2 volt increase at the bulb is worth about 30% more light.

Also, you can get HIR bulbs pretrimmed now from www.hirheadlights.com for $30 each. He also sells them on Ebay. They are the superior Toshiba/Harrison bulbs.

RE: HID retrofits. They don't work well, don't have the proper focus and cause excessive glare to others. If you want that much light, retrofit the 9011 HIR bulb with 2600 lumens to the low beam slots and will be close to the 2800-3200 lumens of an HID. When you factor in the higher color rendering index of an incadecent bulb over HID, you will find that they are about equal.

 

[lovetoski]

...would be nice to stick a number to that improvement....

I measured .7V drop on my 80, and nearly 1 volt on my 60 with stock harnesses. No voltage drop w/new harness. Both were notabily brighter after changing just the harness.

 

[e9999]

I measured .7V drop on my 80, and nearly 1 volt on my 60 with stock harnesses. No voltage drop w/new harness. Both were notabily brighter after changing just the harness.

did you do that with the bulbs mounted by partially unplugging the connector so you could reach one of the blades? Or did you have to take the bulbs out?

 

[RavenTai]

I measured .7V drop on my 80, and nearly 1 volt on my 60 with stock harnesses. No voltage drop w/new harness. Both were notabily brighter after changing just the harness.

Thanks, definatly worth the $40 then

 

[lovetoski]

did you do that with the bulbs mounted by partially unplugging the connector so you could reach one of the blades? Or did you have to take the bulbs out?

I did the measurment with the bulbs in, turned on, at idle. Placed black probe from testor onto neg terminal of battery. Placed red probe onto low beam positive connector on back of bulb. Compared this value to when the red probe was placed on the pos terminal of battery. Diff is voltage drop. Easy test.

On my 60 the voltage at idle drops a lot when loads are applied. No load is ~14V, with everything running voltage drops to below 12. Not so with the 80, voltage stays pretty stable. After installing the harness in the 60, the reduced voltage drop results in notibly better performance for the other electrical items at idle. So, on the 60 the better harness made a general improvement, where on the 80 it only improved the lights. (The lights are worth it though of couse!)