Improving headlights on older Mercedes

[BT5150]

I have a 1989 Mercedes 560sl convertible. It was the last year of a model that began in 1972, so it's got the old tech 5.75" sealed beam lights. I want to upgrade and do it right. I looked on Dan Stern's site and he has the Cibie CSR's, which look great, they'd be about $450 for 4 of them, plus I would do the wiring upgrade, so I'd figure another $100 or so for all of the parts, plus the time involved to do the rewiring. Now I know about the problems of the HID upgrades that are sold, not to mention that they are not legal, but I found this one:

http://www.xesighting.com/products.html


I guess it is the 2nd gen of the Xenarc, which I heard that the 1st gen had a poor design. I wouldn't need to upgrade the wiring, since it uses LESS wattage than now, which would be nice and I do like the light that the HID puts out on my other car. It also looks like these would be legal. Price is about $200 higher than the CSR's with the wiring, but I'd save the time of rewiring, which is worth more to me than $200! Although I think I'd have to do something to compensate for the fact that the old setup used 4 lights while the new one would use 2. I'm wondering if anyone has had experience with either product, the Cibie CSR or the 2nd gen Xenarc and what they think of them?

 

[-Virgil-]

I've driven with CSRs; they are awesome. Don't know why you'd need a wiring upgrade, all you have to do is add a diode (or relay) so the low beam circuit stays live when you switch to high beam. This can be done adequately in about 15 minutes. Skip the cheesy Scotch-Lock connectors (the kind that sandwich onto a wire and pierce its insulation to tap a circuit); usePosi-Taps instead.

The current XeSighting line is all clean-sheet; nothing to do with the old Sylvania Xenarc sealed beam replacement junk. The XeSighting projector lamps (XE7) are quite good; they use the same Valéo (Cibie) projector as used in a lot of Audi and VW headlamps. The reflector lamps (XE7R, XE5R) are considerably less optically clean just because of the tight limitations of producing the required beams from that small of an optic. They're OK, not great, but certainly better than sealed beams. Plus they're HID rather than halogen, if that's a preference, though that by itself doesn't necessarily make them better. Because of the physical packaging (ballast/ignitor, etc.) you will have to make a great deal of modification to your Mercedes' headlight housings. You'll need to cut through at least one thickness of sheet metal, probably two or three plus additional hole-drilling and subsequent rustproofing, if they were still using the same headlight setup on the '89 W107 as they used in my (long departed) '82.

If it were my car, I'd figure out how much night driving I'm going to do with it and decide that way. If not a whole lot, I'd pick out some good H1/H4 units and toss those in with good bulbs and be done with it. If a lot of night driving (or a bunch of fog/rain/snow) I'd get the CSRs.

 

[BT5150]

I wouldn't want to do any sheet metal cutting, so I guess that nixes the HID idea. Stern said he doesn't have the CSR's in stock right now, it'll be about a month till they come in again. Maybe I'll try the H4's to start and see if I want more or not.