With a 42" headlight height, what was the height of the Hella low beam cutoff for a perfect low beam pattern before you lowered the Hellas?
Would Cibie lights have given you a good high beam with the low beam heights you optimized with the Hella units?
Not sure exactly how to answer this. Using the old tried and true Cibie instructions for aiming at marks on a wall 25 feet in front of the vehicle (I know it's not as good as an optical aimer, but this is redneck country and I do have a really good level floor in the plant at work), you want your high beam hotspot to center at the same level as your headlamp centers (42" if headlight is 42" high) and you want the horizontal part of your low beam cutoff to be 3 inches below headlight height (so 39 inches in this case). But you're aiming one lamp that has two beams. With the Hella, the change between the two is a bit excessive. With low aimed at the standard of headlight height minus 3 inches, switching to high will put the hotspot above headlight height - resulting in "monkey chaser" lights illuminating the tree tops while leaving a black hole on the road.
Yes, based on past experience (long past), I would expect to be quite a bit better off with Cibie lights. Back in the mid-late 70's when I had 7 inch round Cibie headlghts plus 5-3/4 inch Cibie H-1 high beams in separate buckets on my 1969 Chevy half ton, I was quite happy. I have also used the 7 inch round Cibie Bobi (Z-beam pattern) and the large rectangular Cibie on ambulances in the 80's and 90's. I would definitely put the large Cibie H-4 lamps ahead of the large Hella H-4. My ideal package of that sort would probably be the Cibie Z-beam accompanied by the curved lens 5-3/4 inch H-1 high beam.
I had hoped (and I'm sure it helps) that the height of the truck would help compensate for the excessive change between high and low on the Hella. If correctly aiming high beam results in a low that's a bit too low and consequently cuts off closer to me than I want, imagine how bad it would be in a low car that had headlights only half as high off the ground.
Well, I have other lights to play with. I even have an old set of sealed beam Per-lux 200T lamps. Was going to try them on the F250 for offroad use just to see if they help me see around corners. I don't recall their legal status, though. I remember when all the truckers used them, but I don't think they they qualify as auxiliary low beams. The 200T's were a 100 watt PAR46. I even have a New In Box set of Per-lux Fogcutters, the smaller version with the 75 watt PAR36. Hmmm... talking with a fellow forum member here, maybe I can sell/swap him something I have for enough to make a down payment on a set of Sylvania Xenarc X1010 aux lows. I do like what the Cibie Booster Beams do for the StarrHID low beams on my Crown Vic.