Yellow Hi-Beams?

[IdahoDoug]

Mot,

Do the aux upgrade first (cheaper, bone stock reliable) and then decide if you want to mess with a conversion hassle. I suspect you'd be blown away with my setup. Driving at night with almost 500 watts of high grade optics is a real treat, and adding full size aux lamps to your truck will make a far larger difference than many realize. Cary's got a good point on the size issue. Not many people have ever been behind a set of full size lamps like these to really understand what I'm talking about when I say a single large lamp easily bests a pair of smaller ones.

As for protection films, that was from a long time ago. Today, mine are all coated with 3M's best stuff - heh.

DougM

 

[mot]

Mot,
Do the aux upgrade first (cheaper, bone stock reliable) and then decide if you want to mess with a conversion hassle. I suspect you'd be blown away with my setup. DougM

Doug,

Can I come over and take your 80 for a spin when I'm in your neck of the woods next time? Where did you say you were located, Sandpoint?

I will take up on your advice and mount one of the two aux. driving lights I couldn't get rid of while my visit to the US: IPF Super Rally 930 or Hella Luminator HID.

And as for low beams, I guess I'll have to try the HIR first and determine if I'll have any desire to get something brighter or not, before taking the plunge.

As always, thanks for your input.

Mot

 

[cary]

I will take up on your advice and mount one of the two aux. driving lights I couldn't get rid of while my visit to the US: IPF Super Rally 930 or Hella Luminator HID.

Mot

Mother F**ker, you couldn't get rid of a pair of Hella Luminators!!!! Send those things to me, I'll take them. Do you have any idea of how much light those things put out!!! It's like strapping a couple of searchlights to the front of your truck. The only downside, is they can't be switched on an off rapidly, they take about 1-2 second to get full brightness and switching them on and off kills them.

 

[mot]

Cary,

You talking to me? Are YOU talking to ME? %$#@^

You must have missed my thread in For Sale while I was visiting the States.

I told my wife that I might have to not sell them and keep them for our own personal use. She did not find it too amusing.

Mot

 

[Jrrrrr]

Finally here is a link showing what an efficient lamp like the Hella retrofits (the ones in this link are actually Cibie CSR lamps) can do compared to a traditional H4 lamp.

Three 5¾-inch round headlamp sets' photometry compared


And finally some more information about lighting output.


Depends which 5-3/4" "Hella or Bosch or Cibie" E-code headlamps you get.

The best headlamps you can put in a W116, period, are these:

http://www.danielsternlighting.com/products/csr.html

> I will want to upgrade to one or the other,and I think the car would
> look better with the euro headlights


Performance of the Hella-Bosch-Cibie 5-3/4" H4 units on low beam is rather
middling, though beam formation is fairly good. This is because of the
small reflector active area combined with the inherent efficiency problem
of an H4 bulb: you only get to use 60 percent of the total reflector area
on low beam! With a large enough reflector/lens and careful optic design
this isn't a problem, but it starts being problematic when you're trying
to wring decent performance out of 60 percent of an already small
reflector (5-3/4" round, 165mm x 100mm rectangular...)

Wanna see some objective comparisons?
Take a look at
http://www.torque.net/~dastern/Photometry/575.html

These are isocandela diagrams for different 5-3/4" round headlamp units.
From top to bottom: Halogen sealed beam, Cibie H4 (best of the major-name
units), Cibie CSR (best lamp you can put on a W116).

If you're not familiar with isocandela diagrams, these will look like
random squiggles and lines. Think of it as a topographic or "contour" map
of the correctly-aimed beam pattern. Each differently-colored line
represents the threshold of a particular intensity level, with the color
legend located to the right of the isocandela diagram. The diagram is
plotted on a chart calibrated in degrees. Straight ahead is represented by
(0,0), that is, zero degrees up-down and zero degrees left-right.

To get a mental approximation of the units and amounts under discussion
here:

Parking lamp: About 60 to 100 candela
Front turn signal: About 500 candela
Glaring high-beam daytime running lamps (e.g. Saturn): 8000 candela

The parameters to pay attention to are the luminous flux (total amount of
light within the beam), the maximum intensity and its location within the
beam relative to the axial point (H,V) -- the less downward/rightward
offset, the longer the seeing distance -- stray light outside the beam
pattern and effective beam width (contained within the dark-turquoise 500
candela contour)

I'll discuss the flat-lens Euro units in my response to Nate Nagel further
down in this thread.

DS

Does anyone know where I can find New Old Stock Valeo (Cibie) Yellow High Beams Part # 082349