Hella ECE headlights for FJ62 (1 Viewer)

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In the valley of the Great Salt Lake.
In my opinion, Cibie headlights are about as good as it gets for headlights for an FJ62. But they are no longer available new. The best I have found at this point are Hella ECE H1 and H4 headlights. The H4 has a nice sharp vertical cutoff nearly as good as the Cibie and the beam intensity is good for the H4 on both high and low beam, and for the H1 which is high beam only. And at about half the cost of Cibie headlights, the Hella ECE seem like good value for the money. But, they have some idiosyncrasies. The H1 has a funky connector on the back of the dust cover, and the H4 has a rubber dust boot with a ring around the lamp that prevents the harness connector from seating all the way onto the headlight connector. So, I came up with a couple of modifications to make things work. The first mod is on the H4 rubber boot.

The rubber boot for the H4 headlight has a rubber ring with little spokes around the edges and webbing in between where the male headlight connectors protrude. This ring and the webbing prevent the connector from seating all the way on the headlight, and it looks to me like it will fall off the first good bump you go over. So I took a really sharp knife and shaved the ring and the little spokes around it off. So basically the back of the rubber dust boot is now flat with no protruding ring around the base of the light. I have attached a couple of pictures of this. The dust boot seems to still seal OK, but it now allows the harness connector to slide all the way onto the headlight connector and should stay put.
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Hella ECE headlights for FJ62 part 2

The Hella ECE H1 headlights have an entirely different dust cover. It is plastic and has a unique connector on the back. Hella does not make a connector to mate with the back of the dust cover. I guess they intended female spade connectors to be used. A harness with the same configuration as the stock harness will not plug onto the back of the headlight. You will need to use jumper wires. However, because the connector on the dust cover has an insulating partition, you can modify your harness to work. The pictures below are of the connector I use for the harnesses I build, but any harness you are using for these headlights should be similar.

First pic shows how to remove the spade connectors from the ceramic plug.

Second pic has the ceramic removed and just the spade connectors and rubber boot.

Third pic shows the H1 lamp inserted into the headlight. The black jumper wire is connected to the ground lug, and the brown wire connects to the lamp. The ground lug is connected to the headlight itself which is a metal housing. If you install this headlight with stock wiring, you will blow your headlight fuse as soon as you turn the headlights on due to the switched ground wiring for the headlights.

You will also blow the fuse if you get the wires backwards. The black wire is ground. If you have one of my harnesses, the wire with the black stripe goes to ground.
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Hella ECE headlights for FJ62 part 3

With the plastic dust cover in place, you are ready to connect your harness wires to the headlight. The ground wire in your harness will connect to the male connector that is connected to the black wire inside the dust cover. The other wire is the hot wire and connects to the lamp. Slip the rubber boot up over the connector and you are good to go.

I have worked out a deal with Dave from Susquehanna MotorSports - High Performance Vehicle Lighting and Competition Accessories Tell him you want the WiredWagon special, and he will give you 5% off the price on his webpage. It's not much, but as my old man used to say: "It's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick."

He'll give you the same deal if you are ordering 7 inch round Hella ECE H4s as well.


By the way, I don't get any kick back from him for this. I'm just out to get the best deals I can find for MUDDERS.

Edit: The last few guys I have referred to him didn't get the discount.

If you do decide to go with Hella headlights from Rally Lights, here is what I would recommend for you FJ62:


Order two each Hella H4 4X6 ECE headlights part number HL79566
Order two each Hella H1 4X6 ECE headlights part number HL79565

Order two each Hella H4 lamps part number H412 for 55/60W that are street legal
Order two each Hella H1 lamps part number HL78105 for 55W high beams.

If you elect to go with higher wattage, you may not be street legal, and as a general rule of thumb, the higher the wattage the shorter the life of the bulb.

If you are installing an upgrade headlight wiring harness (recommended) then you do NOT need any adapters for these headlights.
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Are there any concerns with using the existing, smaller gauge (16 AWG) wires that are enclosed by the H1's dust cover? I'm referring to the brown and black wires in post No. 2 (last picture) - just curious if these smaller wires will restrict the potential of higher wattage bulbs, seeing as how most people put the effort into upgrading to 12 gauge wires directly from the battery to their high beams in order to prevent voltage drop.
 
Its funny that his got resurected today, I just completed this install tonight. I used slc62's ultimate harness and these Hella ECE's with the bulbs they came with (55 watt) and followed these directions to a T and the results are phenominal.

Tip to cutting that rubber boot mentioned above, use a disposable straight edge shaving razor. They are extremely sharp and flat, cut through it like butter.
 
Are there any concerns with using the existing, smaller gauge (16 AWG) wires that are enclosed by the H1's dust cover? I'm referring to the brown and black wires in post No. 2 (last picture) - just curious if these smaller wires will restrict the potential of higher wattage bulbs, seeing as how most people put the effort into upgrading to 12 gauge wires directly from the battery to their high beams in order to prevent voltage drop.

No concern with a short length of 16 gauge wire. The difference between the voltage drop in a 16 ga wire and a 12 ga wire that is less than a foot long is negligible. It's when the wire is several feet long that you would be concerned.
 
Just got my Hella H1 and H4 lamp sets. The dust boots seem to be pretty loose - is that typical? Will the fit be better once installed?

I'm trying to figure out if I need to return these or if they will be good to go. Thanks!
 
Octave - did you ever get a reply to how to connect your Hella H1 with that rubber boot you showed in your picture?
I just received the same item from Amazon (same rubber boot with two wires) but I'm not sure how to connect to my IPF M002 wiring harness.

It looks like when you install the single pin bulb into the Hella housing, there is a "ground" pin on housing metal ring. This seams like it would make the connection polarity sensitive and I want to make sure I get it connected the right way so I don't blow the bulb or fuse or relay.

I appreciate any help on this.
 
Not sure about the IPF harness Octave. I have SLCFJ62's harness and these exact lights. Love the setup. PM me if you need pics etc.
 
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Randy... I also have SLCFJ62's harness and can either buy the H4 lights on Amazon with the different dust cover. How do you connect the harness correctly?
 
@Jsepp
Can you post a link hereof the lights you are looking at installing?
 
This is a pic of the Hella H1... wasn’t sure how to connect the harness.
 
The prongs from the Hella light plug straight into the harness.
 
No, I did not.
 

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