Continuing Sealed Beam Headlight problems

[lostmarbles]

Nice thread Tom! Where did you get those Cibies from and how was the shipping cost to Nz?
...via IH8MUD app

Hi Wijnand

JJC Race & Rally off UK eBay..

In UK currency they were 88.73 (that includes a shipping cost of 12.99) and that turned out to be a bill of $182.60 in our kiwi money.

 

[kling-on]

http://www.truck-lite.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?storeId=10001&productId=92025

I just upgraded to these LED light way better the the Hella H4 I have run even better then HID's ... Not cheap but well worth it

 

[dancar]

http://www.truck-lite.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?storeId=10001&productId=92025

I just upgraded to these LED light way better the the Hella H4 I have run even better then HID's ... Not cheap but well worth it

I like those truck-lite lights, but they're not ADR compliant (yet) so there's no chance. Heck, Mercedes even had difficulty getting a waiver for the AMG forward facing LEDs.....

 

[kling-on]

Wow figured if they are legal in California they'd be legal anywhere

 

[lostmarbles]

http://www.truck-lite.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?storeId=10001&productId=92025
I just upgraded to these LED light way better the the Hella H4 I have run even better then HID's ... Not cheap but well worth it

I like those truck-lite lights, but they're not ADR compliant (yet) so there's no chance. Heck, Mercedes even had difficulty getting a waiver for the AMG forward facing LEDs.....

Wow figured if they are legal in California they'd be legal anywhere

They'd be illegal here in New Zealand too (Not to mention the fact that they'll be designed for driving on the wrong side of the road.)

Here I believe you're not even really supposed to increase your lighting wattage/brightness above OEM.... (but I believe inspectors are reasonable provided you don't fit lights that are clearly significantly brighter than average).

But so far I've not been able find access to the NZ regulations to be able to confirm just how restrictive they are.

Apparantly in some countries authorities will add up all your "peak beam intensity numbers" of your forward-facing lights and check that the sum doesn't exceed a set level.

But in the defence of regulation and control, I sure do hate oncoming traffic making me squint... (which I know is more about correct-alignment and lens-quality than brightness),

And last night I was driving around with my new Halogen sealed beams thinking I may be forcing other motorists to do just that..

I've tilted them down as far as they will go. (Any further and the little springs in the adjusting system would lose their tension and allow the sealed-beams to wobble.) And even after doing this I'm seeing evidence of way too much stray light heading upwards while on low beam....

The lenses on my H4 Cibies (that I can't wait to run) are far more sophisticated than the lenses on these Halogen sealed beams (and far more sophisticated than the lenses on ANY of the sealed-beams I've ever run before). And tests I performed yesterday confirm that this leads to Cibies being much more friendly to oncoming traffic..

(I'll get onto documenting that soon but I'm rather tied up doing some other non-cruiser stuff at the moment.)

 

[lostmarbles]

I have never geeked out on headlights......

I guess I may have geeked out in the early 80's Subzali.. But in an extremely modest way because not much was available back then.

But having a bad experience with that is what led to my reluctance to perform any further lighting upgrades.

I fitted a pair of spotties in the early 80's that were then irresistibly named “Lucas Mean Mothers”. And I proudly mounted them on the leading edge of my roof-rack. <Sigh> I soon discovered they needed “deflectors” to avoid annoying “bonnet glare”. <Sigh> And the fancy chrome soon rusted so I smeared them in fishoilene which went a sickly black colour! <Sigh> And then I discovered that a 40 doesn’t really go fast enough to warrant far-reaching lights anyway. <Sigh> And then I discovered how useless spotties are when they’re pointing skyward as you crest a scrub-covered-dune at night while about to take the almighty plunge back down into who-knows-what. (BTW- NEVER go camping with a tent that doesn’t have a sewn-in-floor and sewn-in-insect-screens! It can force you to recklessly flee your campsite in the middle of the night to escape swarms of viscous mossies!)

Anyway ...Here's some pics "from back in their day" showing my cruiser wearing Aussi plates and proudly displaying its Mean Mothers:

And this next photo clearly shows my Mean Mothers without their "deflectors" (that take away the bonnet glare) so this must represent early days in my learning curve...

Inevitably those mean mothers got dumped and that experience gave me the strength to steadfastly avoid any and all interest in upgrading my lighting from that day forth….Well ….Until the present day anyway…. (So this post is really all to do with me making excuses for why I’ve never educated myself on lighting upgrades in the intervening decades.)

I have not looked at Xenon bulbs, HID headlights, LED headlights (or even just at higher-wattage halogen bulbs than 60/55W) because in my 30 years of driving my BJ40 I’ve judged all my sealed beams (both deceased and still-alive) as being bright enough for my max on-road speed of 100 kph. Furthermore, my new inserts with 60/55W H4 bulbs should out-perform all these sealed beams by a considerable margin due to their improved lens-sophistication (which I’ll get into later) and the extra brightness of having a halogen gas surrounding the filaments (ignoring the fact that my latest and last ever sealed-beams are halogen units as well).

 

[philclmp]

Tom,
Where are you now with the sealed beam dilemma?
Phil C.

 

[MoCoNative]

Geez man, I just put in some of the Hella Ecode H4 housings and bulbs. I had Halogen sealed beams in before. I have not driven my 40 much over that past few years, I forgot how bad the lighting was on it. Actually 15 years ago, my dad and I thought the Halogen sealed beams were way better than the original sealed beams. I have run Sylvania silverstar sealed beams on my FJ60 for several years and they are pretty good. I don't know if you can get anything like that in NZ.

Buutttttt, the Hella housings provide an excellent spread of light across the road and are much brighter. I am just using the stock wiring, they are dimmer than my T100 pickup at idle sitting in the driveway, so that says something about putting relays in the system, considering it is the same bulb. However, once I bump up the RPMS they pick right up, just like the sealed beams did and provide very nice light.

Just swap them out and you will be pleasantly surprised, I guarantee it. Just keep your old ones in a box under the bench in case you lose one of the new ones to a rock or fender bender or whatever instead of waiting for them to die, you have gotten your use out of them already

 

[lostmarbles]

Tom,
Where are you now with the sealed beam dilemma?
Phil C.

I'm running the China-made halogen sealed beams right now Phil.

So far there's no sign of soot appearing inside the lenses so their construction is probably better than their recent predecessors (ie. those horrible Wagner-branded and Revolution-branded sealed beams).

Geez man, I just put in some of the Hella Ecode H4 housings and bulbs. I had Halogen sealed beams in before. I have not driven my 40 much over that past few years, I forgot how bad the lighting was on it. Actually 15 years ago, my dad and I thought the Halogen sealed beams were way better than the original sealed beams. I have run Sylvania silverstar sealed beams on my FJ60 for several years and they are pretty good. I don't know if you can get anything like that in NZ.

Buutttttt, the Hella housings provide an excellent spread of light across the road and are much brighter. I am just using the stock wiring, they are dimmer than my T100 pickup at idle sitting in the driveway, so that says something about putting relays in the system, considering it is the same bulb. However, once I bump up the RPMS they pick right up, just like the sealed beams did and provide very nice light.

Just swap them out and you will be pleasantly surprised, I guarantee it. Just keep your old ones in a box under the bench in case you lose one of the new ones to a rock or fender bender or whatever instead of waiting for them to die, you have gotten your use out of them already

It's very tempting to fit the Cibies permanently now that I've got them. But no... I'll wait.

If I don't finish off those sealed beams now, I'm sure they'' simply sit in storage till I die. (And since they weren't cheap, I'm pressured to get at least some use out of them.)

New Zealand is a small country and we have very limited choice of what we can buy here.

For instance I went BMT Automotive here in town in my quest for 7" H4 semisealed/insert headlights and while these people are official Hella agents, they didn't even volunteer to show me a single Hella product. In fact they never even mentioned the name Hella and offered me only an Autopal product which happens to be made in India.

We have a rather depressed economy (like most countries at the moment I think) and companies can't afford to stock items where demand for them is low so the only stocked item is often the "cheapest to put on the shelf".

BTW- I didn't decide against the Autopal product because of its country-of-origin. (I always try not to do that.) I went to the Cibies as a result of trying to assess quality from reading customers' buying experiences and then, once I'd working out my choices for "apparent-quality", working out which of them could be purchased for the lowest (or most reasonable) price.

Sounds like you're ahead of me in what you consider to be acceptable lighting. I'm still where you and your Dad were 15 years ago

PS:
I've got domestic chores to do now and a funeral of a very good friend this avo, so I'll add to this thread later...

 

[lostmarbles]

More stuff I've learnt .....

You can go for the Koito-brand of H4 semisealed headlights but if you do, you need to be prepared to pay significantly more $$$ than for the equivalent Cibie or Hella. (Apparently 90981-01035 is the Toyota part number a lot of people use to get Koito units from their Toyota dealer.... and btw ...that number is for those who drive on the right-hand side of the road.... which isn't me of course.)

And semisealed units 90981-01017 (white) and 90981-01018 (yellow) were installed as original equipment on BJ42, 45 and 46 models (for driving on the RH side of the road) so I don't think I'm going to be doing anything sacrilegious by converting my sealed-beam headlights to semisealed (and of course I gain by having better and safer lighting).

But I believe the above semisealed lights did NOT have Halogen bulbs with the P43T base.

Take a look at the huge bulbs on this 40-series appearing in this 1983 40series/60series owners manual to see what I mean:

And in this next pic on the far right (showing a headlight on a 60-series station wagon) we start to see a modern H4 bulb with P43T base if I'm not mistaken:

The modern H4 bulbs (with the P43T base) are easier to fit I think (...not that the old H1. H2 and H3 bulbs were particularly hard to fit) because those 3 prongs are not equidistant so a bulb can only be fitted one way.

Incidentally, at first when I heard of H4 bulbs I thought the H stood for the fact that they were halogen. But no, because H1, H2 and H3 bulbs are NOT halogen bulbs.

Similarly, the 3 raised -locating-spigots on the back of sealed-beam headlights and on the back of semi-sealed headlights are not equidistant either. So you can only ever plonk your headlights back into their eye-sockets one way too.... (Which make me puzzle over how some motorcyclist in the UK say on the Web how they rotate their headlights slightly to stop blinding oncoming traffic when they venture over to the continent to drive on the wrong sides of the roads there.

 

[lostmarbles]

Here's some pics of my eye-sockets and of the locating spigots on my Cibies to show how they can be mounted only in the correct way:



(I have to use thumbnails because the big pics just aren't working anymore)

And here's more picws of a Cibie undergoing a trial fitment:


The first pic shows that I have plenty of clearance with my radiator support as Rudi promised I would.

And interestingly, I note that the bulb (when everything is sitting as it should) is rotated perhaps 10-20 degrees clockwise. (That is, clockwise when looking from the back or anticlockwise when looking from the front). And THAT if I'm not mistaken is what makes my headlights dip-to-the-left.

Hang on a minute while I try and take a pic of the bulb filaments and low-beam-shield to show you what I mean....

 

[lostmarbles]

Here's an H4 bulb. Note how the little shield makes the low beam shine only in an upwards direction.

So when the bulb is rotated 10-20 degrees clockwise (when looking in the direction of vehicle-travel which is looking at the headlamp from the rear where you insert the bulb) then this will shine that low-beam light to the top-right part of the reflector (when looking in the same direction as before) which will reflect the light down and to the left in your direction of travel.

(Straight-ahead light is halted by the opaque end of the bulb-glass.)

Anyway here's some tests I did with a 75/50W halogen sealed-beam in the right socket and a Cibie semisealed with 60/55W bulb in the left one:

Note: This orientation means that what your seeing in these photos has the sealed-beam on the left of each photo and the Cibie on the right (because a vehicle's left and right is generally accepted as being in relation to the driver's position when driving).

OK. I admit I could easily have staged all this by how I took the shots or how I aimed the headlights..

But I didn't.

The sealed-beam light seems to be primative compared to the H4 semi-sealed light and this appears to me to make a lot of difference to safety.

And both my halogen sealed-beams and halogen semisealed-beams have all the brightness I need even without the use of relays.



(Big pics started working again for this post!)

 

[lostmarbles]

And now .... because I'm forcing myself to run the halogen sealed-beams rather than store them, give them away, or dump them ...

Here some pics of them both in place and the cruiser as it is right now (running its final set of sealed-beams):

Low beam:

Too much stray light in my opinion!


And then High beam (where stray light doesn't matter):

 

[MoCoNative]

Oh Tom, you're more sentimental than me. All I can say is I jumped in my 40 after not driving it much for years and was scared by the lack of light. Of course, I live in a rural area with lots of deer. I also had a 400 mile round trip planned that I knew would be done in some darkenss and heavy deer country. So I made the decision to swap and I like it. Otherwise I would have just lived with my lights for nostalgia sake also, or done the silverstars like my FJ60. Compared to newer cars there really is a big difference. Sealed beams are just not made to much a standard it seems.

The lack of glare you show is noticeable. I was very disappointed with my pickup. I hit a deer spring before last and it took out my grill and headlights. It was heartbreaking because my T100 was still all original. I had worked really hard to buff out the cloudy discolorment on my original Toyota plastic headlights and covered them with a heavy protective plastic film. They looked great and worked great. I have never like the headlight pattern better on a vehicle than the H4 bulbed lenses on that pickup. Unfortunately I could not justify the over $500 for new Toyota headlight assemblies so I got aftermarket. I was very disappointed in the difference in aiming, spread and glare from the cheaper aftermarket headlights. The glare is noticeable, especially in winter and snow. When you need that good cutoff on dims so you can see in a blizzard, you can't get it.

Guess you don't have those problems though,

 

[lostmarbles]

Oh Tom, you're more sentimental than me. All I can say is I jumped in my 40 after not driving it much for years and was scared by the lack of light. Of course, I live in a rural area with lots of deer. I also had a 400 mile round trip planned that I knew would be done in some darkenss and heavy deer country. So I made the decision to swap and I like it. Otherwise I would have just lived with my lights for nostalgia sake also, or done the silverstars like my FJ60. Compared to newer cars there really is a big difference. Sealed beams are just not made to much a standard it seems.

The lack of glare you show is noticeable. I was very disappointed with my pickup. I hit a deer spring before last and it took out my grill and headlights. It was heartbreaking because my T100 was still all original. I had worked really hard to buff out the cloudy discolorment on my original Toyota plastic headlights and covered them with a heavy protective plastic film. They looked great and worked great. I have never like the headlight pattern better on a vehicle than the H4 bulbed lenses on that pickup. Unfortunately I could not justify the over $500 for new Toyota headlight assemblies so I got aftermarket. I was very disappointed in the difference in aiming, spread and glare from the cheaper aftermarket headlights. The glare is noticeable, especially in winter and snow. When you need that good cutoff on dims so you can see in a blizzard, you can't get it.

Guess you don't have those problems though,

There's not much chance of "fast & big" animals leaping out in front of me in this country because deer numbers are controlled to the point that they are seldom seen near public roads and we don't have roos over here.

Plenty of possums though and they're always a good chance ... Except for they always seem to duck out of the way at the last minute somehow (after you've seen them disappear under your bonnet and seemingly perfectly lined up with one of your front wheels). Anyway, they're far too small..

And sheep are compliant for land cruisers because they're nice and low.

Cows are usually docile and slow so you seldom hit them unless you're driving silly. (And farmers get fined for letting their stock roam on the road these days.)



But anyway ... you raise a good point about sealed beams not being produced to much of a standard...

Some people are misled by ISO9000 certification (or 9001, 9002 or whatever 9000-series number they're up to now in their silly numbers game). Of course all this certification tells you is that the factory has an approved quality control program in place. It actually tells you nothing about the STANDARD REACHED in the process other than that it should be relatively consistant.

What I'm saying is that if my Revolution-brand sealed beams had ISO9002 certification (and they probably had), they could also be purposely designed for lifespan of just 50 hours of use.

And why are my Cibie H4 inserts/semi-sealed-units so much better? Well so far I've been saying it's due to the better lens sophistication but there's obviously more to it than that. After all, my photo of the H4 bulb shows that it is largely responsible....

And why are the sealed beams so bad? Surely the regulators are at fault here because whatever advances went into my Cibies could easily (and at low cost) be applied to sealed-beams and thereby make our roads instantly safer!

So why not a couple more posts where I look at these things ...and maybe smash one of my dead sealed-beams and see if the low-beam filament has any mini-shield at all and if it does, how much it is rotated. And most importantly, see if the sealed beam has anything opaque (like a shield) IN FRONT of the filaments to stop light exiting the lens where it hasn't been relected off the rear shiny surfaces! (It is this non-reflected/stray light of course that is responsible for glare to oncoming traffic even when your lights are dipped and it is similarly responsible for blinding you yourself as the driver when you attempt to drive in fog, heavy drizzle, or snow-fall etc...

 

[lostmarbles]

So why are the Cibies so good:

Yep the modern H4 bulb has a lot to do with it...

I reckon that grey/gray end (and I've even forgotten which spelling of that colour is correct for my own country now but at least I remember "colour" is my word and not "color") is responsible for eliminating 90% or more of "stray light".

And the little shield beneath the low-beam filament, where

• proper fitment into a headlight that's designed for driving on the left (eg. mine) gives it a slight clockwise rotation (ie. clockwise when viewed from the back where you're actually inserting the bulb), and
• proper fitment into a headlight designed for driving on the right (eg. USA) presumably gives it a slight anticlockwise rotation

makes sure your low beam respectively

• dips nicely down and to the left when you drive on the left, and
• dips nicely down and to the right when you drive on the right.

Of course exactly the same H4 bulbs are used regardless of which side of the road you drive on.

And now we looks at the lens:

By my reckoning it is the area enclosed in red that is used for low beam whereas virtually the whole lens is used for high beam. (Remembering that this anticlockwise tilt of the red line is for someone like me who drives on the left. If you drive on the right, the line will tilt clockwise.)

And I guess this must be the "triangle" that Rudi referred to for lighting up roadsigns (and perhaps also errant pedestrians about to step off the footpath into my path) which is partially used in low-beam but used fully on high beam...

If so, I'd expect to see that mirrored onto the opposite side (but still in the lower semi-circle) on lights designed for driving on the right hand side of the road.

Now I'm off to smash a sealed beam .....

 

[lostmarbles]

Yep. I've done the dirty deed...

Here's evidence of the soot that formed from the low-beam filament having been given the fuel (oxygen) to burn (probably from an improper vacuum being pulled on the unit during manufacture or due to a leak occuring).

And here the other photos:

What do you reckon?

Both filaments look rather central to me. (Well, if both were still there and one wasn't burnt out that is.)

And the only shield there is an incomplete one that only partially stops light from exiting without first having been reflected. (I have highlighted the cutout in this shield with red dots so it is more easily seen.)

I think I see why the sealed beams provide so much more stray light than the Cibies...

But I'm still puzzled.

Perhaps I hit the unit with a hammer from the wrong angle? Because I noticed I did buckle/move the shield's mounting wires, which I straightened as best I could before taking the photos. (It took more than one hit to smash so I got more brutal than I intended.) Maybe the original shield position was slightly different?

OK. So I'll now try smashing the other one from a different hammer-blow-direction ...

Back shortly.................

 

[lostmarbles]

So here's the remnants of the second Revolution sealed beam.. (and I haven't had to restraighten anything this time because I smashed it with sideways blows ... which incidentally it had much less resistance to):

Picture posting is playing up once again on ih8mud it seems ...

Anyway, with this one you can see that the upper low-beam filament is largely intact.

And looking straight ahead at the light's centre I appear to be seeing the low beam filament through the cutout in the shield, which right now, seems peculiar to me..

Maybe I'll have to sleep on this. (Surely the designers aren't stupid.)

 

[bj40green]

And I guess this must be the "triangle" that Rudi referred to for lighting up roadsigns (and perhaps also errant pedestrians about to step off the footpath into my path) which is partially used in low-beam but used fully on high beam...

Yes, that's the triangle I'm referring to. Actually, on my Bosch head lights there are 2 sections.
One that that sends a percentage to the right/ to the shoulder of the road and one that send a percentage a little bit up so road signs are easier to read.

To keep it clear..... this for LH drive thus RHS of the road driving.

Rudi

 

[lostmarbles]

Yes, that's the triangle I'm referring to. Actually, on my Bosch head lights there are 2 sections.
One that that sends a percentage to the right/ to the shoulder of the road and one that send a percentage a little bit up so road signs are easier to read.
To keep it clear..... this for LH drive thus RHS of the road driving.
Rudi

Thanks Rudi.

I've been rather enjoying trying to suss out what makes the semi-sealed H4 Cibie unit perform so much better than the sealed unit (both of which are "modern" in the sense that they were sold to me within the last 2 years).

And so this thread is mostly for my own benefit to document what I think I've learned so that I'll remember it.

But I'm also airing my views in the hope someone will read it who has more insight or who is a specialist in this field.

I've studied a lot on the Web and seen a lot of stuff written there that I think is rubbish. So it would actually be nice for someone to tell me that what I've written is rubbish too ... and put me straight. And I reckon you're an ideal candidate for doing that because you're known for delving deeply into electrical stuff!

And especially, what do you make of the design of the sealed beam based on the one I have just opened up (err...SMASHED)?

In the sealed beam, I see the low-beam filament is positioned HIGHER (unlike in the Cibie's H4 bulb) and is also of lower-wattage (as it is in the Cibie's H4 bulb). So I can see that these things make the low beam point down a bit and make it weaker (compared to high beam). And as far as I can work out, those are probably the only features that make these sealed beams pass my 6-monthly "warrant-of-fitness check" (that is imposed by authorities here to ensure continued road-worthiness).

I can't see any evidence in the design for dipping LEFT (which probably explains why when setting up these headlights by shining them on a wall ....or garage door in my case ...that left-movement seemed to to be marginal at best).

And what do you make of that cutout in that big shield that must allow unreflected light to go straight out the lens in a "flattened-U shape" to light the road and up-a-bit on both sides???

Would you agree that the sealed beam optical design is primative in comparison to the H4 semi-sealed (for the lights I've shown here, even if not for ALL of them around the world)? ... Because I suspect it is but then I can't really understand why they didn't just use an upward-facing shield under the low-beam filament that's tilted slightly as per the H4 bulb..

BTW... Once I started looking into this I began to dislike the way the lights are classified as being for either LHD or RHD vehicles (which unfortunately is even how the mighty Toyota classifies its lights in the EPC, so it is indeed widespread). Of course this lighting-design-difference really relates only to which side of the road you drive on because if I went to any "American Car Day" or "hot rod meeting" here I'd see loads of LHD cars but yet they should all be running headlights designed for driving on the left hand side of the road because that's where we drive in this country.

Not that I'm trying to change you or anyone else from doing that because it's much easier/briefer to say "for LHD" than to say "for driving on the RH side" ... However in a technical discussion (which is what I'm trying to have here) I think accuracy starts to become very important.

PS. Your lovely Bosch lenses confirm for me that the triangle moves across exactly as I thought it would to cope with your driving on the wrong side of the roads over there...