Where does Autopal fit in?

[Hamilton Felix]

I was poking around eBay, hoping to get lucky - I didn't, no 200mm Z-beam or Bobi NOS lights out there -
and I found this guy selling 200mm H4 headlights that look similar to Cibie or Bosch, but not quite.

http://www.ebay.com/sch/rіmіinc/m.h...0155ffc2&vxp=mtr&rt=nc&_trksіd=p2047675.l2562

Prices low enough to make you wonder about quality.
He even listed some 100/55w H4 bulbs under that Autopal name.
I get the impression Autopal may have been around for a while, but is not exactly top end.

Any comments, experiences?

 

[TEEJ]

http://www.autopal.net.in/index.php

 

[-Virgil-]

They fit squarely into the category of "headlight-shaped toys". Total garbage. Low quality materials, no real optical engineering (quick and nasty copies of various old Hella lights, mostly), sloppy build, unsafe/inadequate performance, and questionable safety certification/approval. Made in India.

All of the above applies equally to Neolite, which is also the company in India making the "replica"/"reproduction" Cibie lamps (knockoff junk).

 

[Hamilton Felix]

Thanks. That would explain the low prices, on both the light and the non-standard wattage H4 bulbs. I did think some of the round headlights displayed looked odd, like maybe copies of something old, just not at all like the Cibie, Marchal or even Hella or Carello headlights I've owned or seen.

I looked at the website linked above. I see they have Korean technology, too. Be still my beating heart.

 

[-Virgil-]

A fair amount of good lighting is coming out of South Korea. I notice the (molasses-slow) Autopal website doesn't specify which Korea their technology is from.

 

[Alaric Darconville]

Q) Where does Autopal fit in?
A) The toy box.

 

[-Virgil-]

Q) Where does Autopal fit in?

A) The trash barrel.

 

[Alaric Darconville]

A) The trash barrel.

Oh, no-- we try to recycle when we can.

 

[raj55]

Made in India.

All of the above applies equally to Neolite, which is also the company in India making the "replica"/"reproduction" Cibie lamps (knockoff junk).

Neolite seems to be getting out of the dark ages, with the help of ZKW. Here is the link.


http://www.neolitezkw.com/more_about.html

 

[-Virgil-]

Yeah, the ZKW buy-in happened in about 2007 in preparation for building and supplying ZKW-designed lamps for Indian-built BMWs and so forth. I do not expect there to be any uplift to the Neolite universal/aftermarket product line for a very long time, if ever. Keep in mind that aftermarket lamps, especially lamps in US standard sizes such as the H4 units we're talking about, are a tiny market. Very difficult to make back the big investment in properly engineered and built lamps in these sizes; very easy to make back the small investment in new varieties of toys and trash in these sizes. :-(

 

[Hamilton Felix]

Hmm.. small market, difficult to make back money spent on good R&D. That helps explain why some of the best H4 headlights are still Cibie and Marchal products we saw 30 years ago. They did put in the R&D, years ago, not much in that area since.

 

[TJJP77]

What I don't understand is why Cibie stopped making the Z-beam - they already spent the development money and it was a well respected product, so why discontinue it? I can understand discontinuing the Biode and the Amplilux since they were more complex with the dual bulbs and all...but the Z-beam didn't have multiple bulbs and reflectors.

 

[-Virgil-]

What I don't understand is why Cibie stopped making the Z-beam

A few reasons: Even with much greater than normal attention and money to maintaining and renewing the tooling, it couldn't consistently meet the European conformity-of-production requirements with regard to strict control of glare just above the cutoff and just to the left of vertical on low beam. This is because of the hot spot's high intensity and location -- the same characteristics that gave the Z-beam a large advantage in terms of seeing distance. No problem to have a Z-beam style cutoff with projector optics and still stay within the Euro regs on glare, but very difficult with reflector optics, at least at that time. The actual levels of glare produced by even the worst example of a Z-beam were well below creating any kind of actual problem, but they were not always below the extremely low levels required by the regulation. So in that respect the Z-beam was a casualty of the European "glare-phobia".

Also, by the time the Z-beam was discontinued in 1991, the market for 7-inch round lamps worldwide was a very small fraction of what it had been in the 1970s when the Z-beam was introduced. Likely the bean counters at Valeo decided it didn't make sense to produce two kinds of 7-inch round lamp, and the Z-beam (with its bulb shield) was more expensive, so it was discontinued.

I agree with you it was a sad loss.

 

[TJJP77]

A few reasons: Even with much greater than normal attention and money to maintaining and renewing the tooling, it couldn't consistently meet the European conformity-of-production requirements with regard to strict control of glare just above the cutoff and just to the left of vertical on low beam. This is because of the hot spot's high intensity and location -- the same characteristics that gave the Z-beam a large advantage in terms of seeing distance. No problem to have a Z-beam style cutoff with projector optics and still stay within the Euro regs on glare, but very difficult with reflector optics, at least at that time. The actual levels of glare produced by even the worst example of a Z-beam were well below creating any kind of actual problem, but they were not always below the extremely low levels required by the regulation. So in that respect the Z-beam was a casualty of the European "glare-phobia".

Also, by the time the Z-beam was discontinued in 1991, the market for 7-inch round lamps worldwide was a very small fraction of what it had been in the 1970s when the Z-beam was introduced. Likely the bean counters at Valeo decided it didn't make sense to produce two kinds of 7-inch round lamp, and the Z-beam (with its bulb shield) was more expensive, so it was discontinued.

I agree with you it was a sad loss.

Awesome info - thank you!