Z-Beams, Relay Harness, and Phillips X-Treme Vision Installed Last Night...

I finally received the bulbs in the mail yesterday so I could finish up the lighting upgrades on my '92 Miata. I built my own 12g relay harness and already had a pair of extremely nice used Z-Beams. I'd had the Z-beams in the car with a pair of standard wattage Hella bulbs before but no harness so they weren't running at full voltage. I'm really impressed with the X-Treme Vision bulbs running at full voltage; they have a cleaner beam pattern and are just about as bright as a pair of Hella 80/100 watt bulbs I had in a previous car with Z-Beams. Before with the 55/60w Hella bulbs and stock wiring I was thinking about adding a pair of driving lamps for better distance visibility on high beam, but they won't be needed now. I had originally thought about upgrading to JW Speaker LED's but I'll stick with these, I'm not sure that LED's would have as good of a beam pattern.

The Z beam was last made about the same year as your 92 Miata. Not only will it look great from the outside (correct compared to an LED), but those ZBeams produce a very good pattern. You have made good choices all around. Do you belong to a club or do any group touring?

theastronaut said:

I finally received the bulbs in the mail yesterday so I could finish up the lighting upgrades on my '92 Miata. I built my own 12g relay harness and already had a pair of extremely nice used Z-Beams. I'd had the Z-beams in the car with a pair of standard wattage Hella bulbs before but no harness so they weren't running at full voltage.

Click to expand...

And no telling what bulbs you really had-- Hella outsources their bulbs.

I'm really impressed with the X-Treme Vision bulbs running at full voltage; they have a cleaner beam pattern and are just about as bright as a pair of Hella 80/100 watt bulbs I had in a previous car with Z-Beams. Before with the 55/60w Hella bulbs and stock wiring I was thinking about adding a pair of driving lamps for better distance visibility on high beam, but they won't be needed now. I had originally thought about upgrading to JW Speaker LED's but I'll stick with these, I'm not sure that LED's would have as good of a beam pattern.

Click to expand...

The XTV bulbs really improve the focus over standard bulbs. And before the relays, higher wattage bulbs just get more starved for voltage and underperform.

The JW Speakers are going to have excellent beam patterns and will outperform the Z-Beams-- but they come with a tremendous price tag.

fastgun said:

The Z beam was last made about the same year as your 92 Miata. Not only will it look great from the outside (correct compared to an LED), but those ZBeams produce a very good pattern. You have made good choices all around. Do you belong to a club or do any group touring?

Click to expand...

Yeah, I didn't really want any funky looking lights even thought they're flipped down during the day. The Z-Beams look right at home. I'm in a SC/NC Vintage VW club and the Clemson Sports Car Club. I joined CSCC last year and they do group drives occasionally during the school year. I've added a set of Tein coilovers, E30 BBS wheels (look like M-Edition BBS's but 15x7 instead of 14x6), and a set of UHP tires so it's ready for autocrossing or group drives.

Alaric Darconville said:

And no telling what bulbs you really had-- Hella outsources their bulbs.




The XTV bulbs really improve the focus over standard bulbs. And before the relays, higher wattage bulbs just get more starved for voltage and underperform.

The JW Speakers are going to have excellent beam patterns and will outperform the Z-Beams-- but they come with a tremendous price tag.

Click to expand...

After joining here and doing some searching I found out that Hella outsources their bulbs. Won't be buying them anymore. I did have a relay harness in the other car that was running 80/100 watt bulbs, they had good output but the beam pattern wasn't as nice.

I've seen reviews of JW Speaker and Truck-Lite LED's and they usually mentioned that the beam had light/dark areas, where the Z-Beams have a very even distribution of light. I think there are newer versions of LED's out now that may not have that issue. I'm super happy with these thought, especially since they don't look like a weirdly styled modern light.

theastronaut said:

I did have a relay harness in the other car that was running 80/100 watt bulbs, they had good output but the beam pattern wasn't as nice.

Click to expand...

Overwattage filaments are oversized; oversized filaments reduce focus.

Not to bad for "basic" transportation!

If you want to see how awesome Truck Lite's are drive south for an afternoon stroll and I will show you mine. =-) Then we can take the Miatas for a spin in the country...