GE 4421 sealed beam??

[JTMcC]

Any insite or experience with these?
For use as a high beam on (from well maintained to no maintained) dirt right-of-ways where we drive quite a bit after dark in a work truck.
100W and 300 hr rating. Going in old Daylighter buckets. Any better suggestion for 100w or so, non spot beam?


J

 

[-Virgil-]

It's not something I'd bother putting on the front of a vehicle. Very "hungry" (inefficient/high wattage for the light they produce). But they're cheap and if you have the charging system and headlamp circuitry to support the high current draw, maybe they'll be good enough for your dirt truck usage. They produce more or less a horizontal bar-shaped beam.

 

[JTMcC]

Ok. Do they put out a lot of light?

Dodge/Cummins with 130A alt.
I have the buckets, the wire, the relays, switch and lots of bumper space. So I'm looking for a cheap way to light up more of the wilderness in front of the truck so I can see the bigger rocks, bigger ruts, bigger elk, etc. sooner and easier.
The 150 amp narrow spots aren't much use during my drives and I'd like to find a high power, wider beam sealed beam that's rated for more than 25 hours of life. Maybe it doesn't exist.
But I would want a considerable amount of light if I was to go to the trouble.

I inherited several Daylighters that were on a truck I bought several years ago (the old ones with 150W sealed beams) that put out a very bright,small spot waaay off in the distance, so they've been sitting on a shelf for 15 years.

J

 

[-Virgil-]

I don't think you have 150 amp spot lights (that would be 1950 watts or so). Yikes!

The sealed beams you're looking at are cheap enough youc ould probably afford to put them in and see if they work well enough for your needs. If I were doing what you're doing, I would go get a set of Cibie H1 lens-reflector units from Dan Stern and use 100w H1 bulbs in them. If those aren't in the budget, I'd probably step down to Hellas.

 

[JTMcC]

Make that 150W : )

Thanks,

J

 

[JTMcC]

OK I'll throw this out, I understand the dislike for HID retro kits as illegal and bad mojo on the highway.

In a 6" bucket, used off the highway on dark dirt, is there any worth to the cheap HID kits as far as putting a lot of light out??? Speed varies from granny gear crawl to 60mph+ on good graded right-of-ways.

I have decent lighting for on road use.

on edit I'll add, a lot of up and down hill use where my "on road" lights are either shining into the sky or shining into the dirt right in front of the truck, and almost useless. I'm looking for a lot of all around up down side to side light and some reach down the road for higher speeds. Maybe unrealistic expectations, I don't know.

J

 

[Hamilton Felix]

You know, my idea of "off road" is mostly the slow crawl. Sure, there are straight stretches in powerline right-of-way and the occasional old logging road. But what I find I need most is some sort of low speed flood, something to help me see what's around that really tight turn, fill in the holes in front of me, etc.

For high beams that reach out, those curved lens Cibie H1 high beams really are impressive. But I mostly used them on highways on a car that went, well... too fast.

I do sort of wonder if you can make good use of that less than ideal 4421 sealed beam (assuming you have a cheap source) and its 50 degree wide by 7 degree high beam pattern. I'm picturing two or three of them, aimed parallel but at different heights, so the 50 degree wide beam patterns are "stacked" for a 14 degree or more vertical spread.

I'm sure it beats driving with landing lights - and I've even tried the 250 watt #4522 bulb in my offroad truck. Heck of a spotlight if the wiring is big enough, but not for driving.

Hey, wait, that beam pattern... PAR46... 100 watt... 300 hour life... Scheinwerfermann, isn't that the original sealed beam for the old Per-lux 200T lights? I have a set of those in the shop. Put that bulb into the special louvered Per-lux fixture to control glare, and it was every over the road trucker's friend way back in the (nearly) dark ages.

If I had pile of those bulbs for next to nothing, and I had a big alternator and already owned the housings, I'd probably use them. But if I had a pair of 5-3/4" Cibie H1 curved lens high beams (I do), I'd go for those (and I will, having already bought buckets from Grote). They are nice, despite the age of the design.

Frankly, for offroad light, any extra out front to fill in the holes will help, even two or three or four 5-3/4" halogen sealed beam headlights on the brush guard. Because I live in such wet country, and my offroad vehicles tend to be used far less than regularly and they sit outside in the weather, I have grown a healthy respect for sealed beams. That sealed glass envelope never corrodes or clouds/yellows. If really old, they can rust/corrode the base of the terminals and some wiggling or vibration can let air get in to destroy the bulb, but that's pretty rare. Sealed beam is not state of the art, but I like it for the old beater that sits out in the yard 95% of the time.

 

[-Virgil-]

I think the unreliability/danger factor of "HID kits" would keep me away from them even for non-regulated, genuinely off-road use.

 

[Hamilton Felix]

That's interesting. I posted after 4 pm, Scheinwerfermann's post appeared right afterward, and my personal settings have "time" as PST (GMT-8). Yet the above posts display to me as 2:03 pm and 2:05 pm. FWIW I am pushing the submit button at 1757 hrs PST.

Aha, it displayed 3:46 pm, not exactly 2 hours, but 2hrs, 11 min. Clock problems on the forum?

 

[JTMcC]

You know, my idea of "off road" is mostly the slow crawl. Sure, there are straight stretches in powerline right-of-way and the occasional old logging road. .

My idea of off road is wherever we're making money at the time. This truck's been from the Canadian border to the Maxican border and from California/Oregon/Washington to southern Florida.

But many days are on a mainline pipeline construction ROW and those can vary from groovy to harsh. Other than that we spend a lot of time in the AZ/NV deserts and mountains. So sometimes crawling along at 3 mph in 2' of snow and sometimes crossing the desert at 60-80.
I just never know.

J