10 Headlights -> too many?

[ElectronGuru]

Thought CPFs might appreciate a little headlight overkill:

The law states that I can have any 4 (two pair) running at any one time and they don't need covers if mounted below the winshield. So the top set fire with the high beams, the middle set (driving) and bottom set (fog) fire alternately with the low beams. The top and middle sets are Hella, the bottom set is PIAA

And to make sure I can see every blade of grass, the top set have different lenses. One is for straight ahead, the other is for cornering

All safely tucked inside a Warn grill guard thats bolted to the frame. And yes, they are driven by dual red tops and a 140amp police package alternator.

 

[270winchester]

Re: 10 Headlights -> to many?

you are still normal when compared to some of these guys.

http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=673117

 

[Flummo]

Re: 10 Headlights -> to many?

I hope I dont make you sorry, but comepared to a few cars here that is, well, hmm... not much. Here we have no laws about how many lights are allowed at high beam, only such regulations regarding low beam and foglights.

So, lets take a example, my friends VW, a relatively good example for any car here with a driver who likes to see the road by night. In other words, nothing like what I would have if I had a car... The lights on the car is:
2x55W low beam
2x55W high beam
2x55W foglights
4x55W auxillary lights (the kind of ramp you can buy with 4-6 small lights in a row)
All lights fed directly from the battery through relay and 2,5mm2 wires, that made a huge improvement for the low & high beam over the factory wiring by the way.

At high beam all lights are turned on. And despite that, I wouldn't mind a bit better light...:thinking: I've been trying to convince him to go HID, but unsuccessful so far.

 

[Ken_McE]

Re: 10 Headlights -> to many?

Those little PIAAs down in the front center, are they for looks, or can you really drive by them??

 

[Ken_McE]

Re: 10 Headlights -> to many?

you are still normal when compared to some of these guys.

http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=673117

ElectronGuru, stay away from this link. Those guys are a bunch of crazed Subaru owners. You start hanging out, they'll talk you into retrofitting a trunkmonkey into your Jimmy, and after that your driving will never be the same... :devil:

 

[ElectronGuru]

Re: 10 Headlights -> to many?

Those little PIAAs down in the front center, are they for looks, or can you really drive by them??

I'm huge on functionality and have been driving with this light configuration for going on 10 years now. The PIAAs are 1500XT Ion Crystal Fogs and have three uses, in order of importance:

1) Fog. they really do cut through the white stuff. They are wired in to only function with the OEM low beams, but I put in an over ride switch to kill the actual low beams. It makes it tough for other cars to see you coming but when you're alone on a mountain road, visible range jumps by order of magnitude because the white beams aren't blinding you.

2) Wide view. The lenses on these are super wide, like dual "mini" versions of the large wide angle at the top. They draw a dramatically wide line of light from left to right. High speed driving on winding roads on low, you can see what's around the corner before you get there.

3) Traffic. I nickname these the Stingers. At 2am on a 2 lane Interstate, they come in handy for enforcing "slower drivers keep right."

BTW, they are each nearly 6 inches wide (12 inches total). They only look 'little' because everything else is so big. For reference, the square right above them is a standard 2 inch tow receiver as you often see under rear bumpers.

 

[ElectronGuru]

Re: 10 Headlights -> to many?

All lights fed directly from the battery through relay and 2,5mm2 wires, that made a huge improvement for the low & high beam over the factory wiring by the way.

Tip for more brightness: Incandescent bulbs function function a bit like glowing fuses. 55W isn't a minimum, its a maximum. With standard alternator outputs, they often run at lower than the rated number. Boost the alternator amperage (buy a better one) and you get more light with the same wattage bulbs. First time I put in the 140 amp unit and fired the engine, the little under hood lamp got so bright, we thought it was going to explode. :thumbsup:

And it make all lights (OEM or not) instantly brighter.

 

[chmsam]

Re: 10 Headlights -> to many?

Um, slightly OT and a bit of a rant, but a few of those NASIOC guys (and only a few) run high speed, unauthorized rally events without prior notice to the local residents. Why is that a problem? Imagine you are a local resident and you are driving home to your lovely cabin in the woods when a tricked out WRX comes at you on a narrow, lonely, unpaved forest road at about 75 mph. This is actually more dangerous during the daytime because at night you can see the oncoming cars' headlights -- at night the lights give you a bit of warning. Pretty dangerous and upsetting.

This sort of thing has made it difficult for the organized and authorized motor sports community to continue running events that have been at some of those locales for many years. The authorized events are just as much fun, are safer, and run on the same roads but only after the event has been advertised in advance. Professional level events take further steps -- the roads posted days before the event and the roads closed to all traffic during the event. The organized pro crowd also run with LEO support and medical crews on standby. A very few of the NASIOC folks see no problem with running those roads with no notice, but it has upset some residents and some LEO's, making life difficult for the more "legit" rally crowd. The unauthorized events sound really exciting at first, but are quite dangerous. I prefer to go with the more organized groups to keep everyone safer and happier.

PM me if you'd like to know about such organizations and would like to have fun with street legal cars, even "every day driver" cars at the amateur level. Working the pro events is also great fun -- for instance, you can be really up close and personal with the cars as they run the stages. It is a huge amount of fun.

Ah, well, sorry for the mini-rant.

Back on topic, high quality lights set up with the proper wiring and relays, chosen for the right purpose, and aimed well can do the same thing with fewer lights. Knowing what to use and how to use it is the trick -- Well, that and knowing that you tend to get what you pay for. For example, 55 watt high beams are kind of low power even for DOT legal lights. You also don't need to look like you're going to run out of grill space to have the road properly lighted.

If you try searching the web for performance rally' lights you'll find a lot of info. You might want to start be searching with the following as listed including the quotes: "performance rally" lights. Also try: "performance rally" lighting.

Hope this helps -- and turns someone into a performance rally fan.

 

[TorchBoy]

Re: 10 Headlights -> to many?

Well I think it's quite a nice setup, not really overkill.

Our roads here are mostly too twisty for me to have ever gone for a narrow beam. Does it make any difference at all having yours on the non-driver side?

 

[scott.cr]

Re: 10 Headlights -> to many?

Dude, is that blower whine or is that the sound of your alternator brushes burning to vapor? ;-)

I actually toyed with the idea of buying some regular driving lights and machining a new socket adapter to take a bipin Osram 54254 lamp. It's a 24 volt lamp @ 250 watts, 10,000 design lumens. I found DC-DC converters that could handle the power conversion from 12 vdc to 28 vdc at that wattage, overdriving the lamp to the tune 11,149 lumens. At that power level I think a stock, common automotive charging system would only be able to support the lighting for short durations. Bulb life would also be less than 8 hours; replacement cost is only $2.70 so I would consider it a non-issue to carry a dozen or so spares.

I'd love to do that to my vehicle.... maybe the wife's Element would be a better choice for a victim though (unless I can find an off-road rallye type of skid plate for my Audi to round out the looks department).

 

[Illum]

Re: 10 Headlights -> to many?

there will never be enough light if your driving in fog....just make sure your selection of lights is aimed at the ground....as another car from the opposite lane will be seeing a wall of light.

Some idiot turned on his [I would presume HID because the color temperatures exceeding over 16000K, very very blue tinted] headlights about 1000 feet away from me and I'm on the opposite lane it feels like driving into a cloud of pastel blue smoke....good thing the road was straight...if there was a bend I wouldn't have seen it.

 

[TorchBoy]

Re: 10 Headlights -> to many?

I'm trying to figure out the title of this thread. I would say that 10 headlights was many. Is it supposed to read "too many"?

 

[ElectronGuru]

Re: 10 Headlights -> to many?

Our roads here are mostly too twisty for me to have ever gone for a narrow beam. Does it make any difference at all having yours on the non-driver side?

There are three basic beam patterns:

Pencil

Driving/European

Cornering

After deciding to get one of each of the later two, I gave quite a bit of thought to the question of which side for driving and which side for cornering. Then I realized that this isn't water or air or anything with matter or mass, this is light! As they are less than 2 feet apart (a tiny percentage of the total field), its not going to matter, so I basically flipped a coin.

PS, I don't know which side New Zealanders drive on, but the wide beam light is on the left, the same side as my steering wheel.

 

[ElectronGuru]

I'm trying to figure out the title of this thread. I would say that 10 headlights was many. Is it supposed to read "too many"?

I was only familiar with 'too' as in 'also' - I've edited the title.

 

[TorchBoy]

On my last car I had a couple of "driving" lights, round, which in my experience gives a better beam than rectangular. I didn't know they are also called "European". With the 130W bulbs I had in them I couldn't outdrive them on the straight, and they provided quite a bit more width than pencil beams, which as I've mentioned is quite handy around here. It was sometimes a bit too bright approaching corners though, especially if there was a reflectorised warning sign on the outside of the bend.

On particularly twisty (and quiet and of course at least slightly foggy) roads I used my foglights, instead of or as well as the driving lights. I chose yellow lenses for a bit of variety to all the white lights, and with 100W bulbs they did quite nicely. I had also replaced my parking lights with 25W bulbs instead of the 5W originals, and that definitely helped put a bit more light out the corners.

Because the headlight hi/low changeover was make-before-break if I held the control stalk in the right place I could have both hi and low on at the same time (through relays of course), for a total 640W of mostly halogen light. I toyed with the idea of replacing the headlight bulbs with something a "bit" brighter, and if I had put 130W bulbs in the foglights as well I could have had just over 1000W very inexpensively... for short periods at least. The alternator really wasn't up for anything like that.

(I also had a total of 8 air horns in that car, but that's another story.)

It seems the newer the car the harder it is to find good locations to attach driving lights to. I haven't figured out my present car, but its headlights aren't too bad, and came already on relays.

 

[greenlight]

This thread needs more pics for reference.

 

[TorchBoy]

Because the headlight hi/low changeover was make-before-break if I held the control stalk in the right place I could have both hi and low on at the same time (through relays of course), for a total 640W of mostly halogen light.

That's not right, 640W was with just the hi beam filaments on in the headlight bulbs. Using the make-before-break to turn on the low beam filaments upped the total to 750W.

 

[Flummo]

My friends VW Passat:

Original headlights scrapped and replaced with aftermarket lights, low beam projectors and high beam reflectors. Philips Vision Plus H7 lamps fed through 2.5mm2 wire and relay straight from the battery for each lamp, i.e. four wires feeding four lamps.
4 auxillary lights was there already when he bought the car. 55W each.
2 cheap foglights, disconnected and due for replacement. Didn't work very good to start with, water got in them and destroyed them after a while, and on top of that the relay ended up getting stuck in "on" position, making them impossible to turn off. Currently looking for another good foglight to take their place.

And no, he doesn't think that he has enough light.:thinking: I'm trying to convince him to go HID, but so far no success. He keeps saying "too expensive", just to go and buy booze and beer for more money and drinking it all in no time.

 

[Tachikoma]

I wish I could have something like this

Unfortunately, here in Italy, you can't put any additional light on your car without breaking the law:mecry: