I already get the impression they're superior to any lights I've ever run before WS. But I really need to run them for a good while before trying to give a valid report. (I would be extremely surprised if I end up taking a hammer to them!
).....................I'll get the best idea of how my Cibies perform when I'm back driving on the open road where there's no street lighting. Then I'm sure I'll observe much better low-beam and high-beam patterns and be able to tweak them back up to point at a more normal level..................Right now I don't see the point in burning up fuel just for the sake of trialing & adjusting my lights so it'll have to wait until the next time I need to go to on a decent night trip......Could be as long as 3 months away ....
Well a couple of days ago I drove right through most of the night. That's 7 1/2 hours of solid driving while trying to maintain the open-road speed limit (which is 100 kph here in New Zealand) for most of the time because I was in a hurry (and with severe clutch problems, was trying to avoid EVER having to stop ... but that's another story).
Anyway ... I can now finally report (after this very thorough 500+ km night-time test) that my new Cibies are nothing short of supurb!!!
Sometimes I was even forgetting to return to high beam as a result of seeing so well on dip. (And remember that this was in the middle of the night on a mixture of straight and winding roads with ABSOLUTELY NO form of street lighting and with very little in the way of moon-lighting).
At the same time, when on dip (and very much
unlike the sealed beams I've recently purchased) there was absolutely no tendency to dazzle oncoming traffic (with absolutely no one choosing to "flash me" through mistaking my low beam to be high-beam).
Note: These lights are still pointed "downwards to the max" via the screw-adjustment. (This is something I did for the previous poor-quality sealed beams to stop dazzling oncoming traffic while on dip.) So much so, that winding out the top screws any more would make the Cibies liable to "wobble" through lack-of-spring-tension in the system that's used to hold them in position in the bib. Furthermore, I saw no need to raise them (even though it's clear I'm no longer dazzling oncoming traffic with these better quality lights) because my low beam reach is now (even with this lowest-possible aim) allowing me to drive at 100kph on dip in a very relaxed manner. (That is, it allows me to drive on dip without fearing I can't stop within the length of road I can see in front of me and without fearing I may miss something entering my path from the side, such as a wandering large animal.)
And when I do put these Cibies on high-beam ..... well .... hell... - the light is so long, wide and powerfull that I'd have to be silly to ever think of fitting anything in the way of additional lighting. (It was actually so strong that whenever it hit a large traffic sign I was tempted to dip just to reduce the glare!)
So it's sure nice to report that while other things are going pear-shaped for me, at least my Cibie lighting upgrade is a resounding success!!
