Four eyes of fire - headlight and harness upgrade on my 62

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If you are looking for cheap, I'd do a relay-harness upgrade (build your own, or Sesquehanna) and stick with sealed beams. For more $$$ (likely more than double the cost), I'd do the H4 high-low outers and leave the inners sealed beam.
 
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The upgraded wiring does help even stock sealed beams shine much brighter due to a boost of about 1.5 volts of juice at the back of the bulb over stock. Like all upgrades of this nature, it will make you wish you had gone for the H1s and H4s and be done with it. Agreed, no extra lighting will be needed for a long time before the upgrade Jones kicks in again. One thing to remember is that the sealed beam connectors will not fit on the Euro H1 and H4 bulbs so popping for the extra now does have its benefits. It's good to see where you are going and to be seen.
 
Just to beat a year dead horse, can I use the bulbs from Daniel Stern and the harness from Susquehanna or IPF and get the same results?
 
Yeah I used the harness that kurt at Cruiser Outfitters sells...with two IPF headlights and two IPF bulbs...think total for whole setup was a little over $250... I dont have the electrical knowledge or trust in my work to build my own kit like you...so I went with the tried and true and easy. Took me 30 minutes to install everything in my 60.

Like you said..a new harness and new lights with new bulbs are like NIGHT and DAY literally....best money spent on my 60 for the impact it makes for every day driving.

Great post. In my build thread I show the difference in late afternoon and they were too bright to look at after upgrade even BEFORE it got dark out. :) :)
 
The lamp housings I got came with a wiring adapter to go from seal beam sockets to the H4 configuration bulbs.
 
Awesome info, thank all of you. 1 more Q, would you recommend the Hella or IPF? I'm guessing the Hella are more, and that D.S. probably sells the adaptors...
 
Either of those (Hella or IPF) are going to come H4, so you are not going to need any adapters if you also upgrade your headlight wiring harness. I am running Cibie headlights, so can't comment on either Hella or IPF, but according to Mr. Stern, Hella-IPF is between Sealed Beam on the low end, and Cibie-Bosch on the higher end.
 
Mine are Bosch on Stern's recommendation. IIRC, he recommends the Bosch ahead of the Cibie for applications that have the headlights sitting high.
 
Hey guys,

None Cruiser owning Saab guy here. For a Wedding gift to a buddy and his wifey, I bought a pair of Hella H1s and H4s, tried installing them yesterday and the RH fuse blew.

I have emailed D.S. and S.M.S. with the questions, but it looks like the easiest thing to do would be to use the kit ready by member slcfj62, or the S.M.S kit HL28202S.

Can anybody think of any reason the above wiring kits wouldn't work?

I believe the HL28202S kit ties into the batter + according to the website, but reading this thread it sounds better to attach directly to the Alt. Can this be done with either kit above? Does slcfj62's kit account for this vs battery?

Thank's for the help guys, I don't wanna let him down.

(pic of the saab with Hellas)
4732_1132544164346_1549551490_309606_7895692_n.jpg
 
^^^Unless Saab used a switched ground like Toyota did/does, and not switched pos like the other 99% of manufacturers, I see that being one obstacle.
 
TweekTurbo is talking about headlights for my FJ62, not his SAAB
 
What Wile E is talking about is the fact that when you turn the headlight switch on in an FJ62 Landcruiser, 12 Volts is presented to all four headlights. The HI Beam/LO Beam switches the ground between the HI and LO headlight elements. This requires a wiring harness designed to specifically deal with the Toyota "switched ground".
 
TweeksTurbos said:
, I bought a pair of Hella H1s and H4s, tried installing them yesterday and the RH fuse blew in an 88 FJ62

I have emailed D.S. and S.M.S. with the questions, but it looks like the easiest thing to do would be to use the kit ready by member slcfj62, or the S.M.S kit HL28202S.

Can anybody think of any reason the above wiring kits wouldn't work?

I believe the HL28202S kit ties into the batter + according to the website, but reading this thread it sounds better to attach directly to the Alt. Can this be done with either kit above? Does slcfj62's kit account for this vs battery?

Let me address the above paragraph again. I have read that some of you prefir to wire directly to the alternator, vs the battery. slcfj62, where does yours tap into?

Thank's for the help guys, I don't wanna let him down.
Click to expand...

I removed any mention of saab and tried to clarify things a bit better.
 
When I did my truck, there were 2 issues with DS's instructions (that apparently were not fixed post-feedback). One was confusion over the H4 vs. stock sealed beam pin layout. I first set up the pin layout to the new lights incorrectly from confusion. The second was an error in wiring for the switching relay. From my foggy recollection, the instructions given had the output to the high beam relay and the low beam of the H4s reversed. These 2 issues gave me lights that misbehaved horribly till a good deal of thinking "illuminated" the mistakes. If I were to do it again, I would go for one of SLC's harnesses.

Hope this helps rather than confuses further.
 
Definitely go for SLC's harness. I installed mine a few weeks ago. Very high quality materials and workmanship, and everything fits just like it's supposed to.
 
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