Air-Cooled Porsche lighting upgrades

My (most) fun toy is an '88 Porsche 911 Carrera.

Pics available here https://www.instagram.com/PATRICKOSSENKOP/

The headlamp system is currently upgraded with this relay kit: https://www.jwesteng.com/shop/911/16-911-headlight-relay-kit-74-89.html and Philips Xtreme Vision 9004 bulbs. I recently aimed them with the machine at work and it is definitely an improvement, but the lenses are cracked and I know I'm leaving options on the table.

I quit driving with the fogs on all the time, but they need attention. They currently have these lenses: https://www.ecstuning.com/b-uro-parts/yellow-fog-light-lens-left-side-fitment/91163194100~uro/ but also have pre-existing yellow bulbs. I've been procrastinating changing the bulbs for no reason whatsoever.

This specific car does have a CHMSL at the top of the rear glass but does not have a rear fog lamp. I'm open to upgrading all lamps on the car but trying to preserve the period aesthetic.

There's a lot of garbage on the market:

Aesthetically I like this option https://www.theretrofitsource.com/f...preselect=54369,51555,51557,51559,51558,51965
with the black trim ring and fluted H4 lens over the projector like this https://s55e81-eilydawjvck7.webscal..._upgrade_2_1.jpg.pagespeed.ic.rAuYaiJiky.webp but I'm sure that would be an operational disaster.

The 911 cult currently favors these fancy lights https://9elevenheadlights.com/product/raven-gunmetal/ I like them best in this configuration but they still don't look "right" on the car. https://scontent-dfw5-2.xx.fbcdn.ne...=3ac9fbb2b33625760b27ce283c77491b&oe=5D1C3ACD

The OEM euro H4 part# 911-631-113-02 may be my best bet with the possibility of adding aux high beams. Most people mount the hood lamps, but drilling into my hood and impairing forward daytime vision isn't in the cards. Although it's very low, I'd rather mount something in the front plate area between the fog lights.

I've looked into using the Beetle housings and mounting a quality 7" lamp but I feel like even the Cibie option would look too "old" for this car and a JW Speaker would look too modern.

Please advise and don't forget that I'm looking for total vehicle lighting system upgrade, not just the headlamps.

Thanks everyone!

You're right when you say there's a lot of garbage on the market...and you pointed directly at some great examples of fraudulent garbage (theretrofitsource, 9elevenheadlights). You're right about projectors behind a fluted lens being an "operational disaster". Cobbled-up crap like that is an absolute, hard, flat, no that merits a serious spanking for whoever sells it or promotes it -- shame on them.

Fog lamps on all the time is the wrong thing to do. It's understandable at the moment, given the near-zero foreground light produced by your 9004 headlamps, but once you have good headlamps in the car, stop doing that.

Driving lamps are substantially useless down at license plate/fog lamp height area, but hood lights are problematic for the reasons you mentioned. Maybe pick out a headlamp option that doesn't force you to pick between two bad options for driving lamps (because it gives good enough high beam performance that you don't need auxiliaries).

The OEM Euro H4 headlamps are a decent pic, not necessarily a very cost-effective pick, given that they aren't objectively better than the lamps you have now (just different, though you may prefer them).

You might consider sending an email to Dan Stern ( danielsternlighting.com ); he has a big comprehensive workup on 911 upgrades he sends out. I don't know why he doesn't put it (and a bunch of his other info) up on his website; if he would, I could just toss up a link!

Long time lurker here but when I saw this thread I finally joined. I too have an '88 911. The very first upgrade I did was to buy the Bosch H4 lights back when they were affordable, then put the same relay kit mentioned above from Pelican Parts which netted just under a full volt higher to the lit bulbs than without and finished off with the Osram 70/65 H4. Overall, much better than the U.S. spec lights with the low beams having a wider smoother spread and the hi-beams just more effective and actually pretty good overall. But, always looking for something better and at the same time we have to keep in mind that it's still a classic Porsche.

Living in L.A. I called 9elevenheadlights and they were kind enough to tell me they were using Morimoto projectors. Kind of a letdown after also finding the owner is a product designer from Art Center College in Pasadena, the very same place I have a photography degree from. They claimed that the Morimoto, which they apparently take apart and somehow re-do were, according to them, "much better" whatever that means than the Hella's that Singer uses in their modified vintage Porsche's. I also called Singer, and while they were polite over the phone, under no circumstance would they sell individual parts.

Porsche was kind enough to leave the welded in steel mounting tabs from their earlier models so it IS possible to mount a 7 inch round light there and the original Hella clear lenses are also readily available so we can maintain the original aerodynamics. There's a company from the UK that sells a kit using Hella Bi-LED units in their custom bowls, which are pretty much needed as the Hella's are almost too long to fit. http://www.stuttgart-classica.co.uk...l-dash-parts-wipers-brake-servo?rq=headlights It's also a fair amount of work to do the entire install. And not exactly inexpensive either, but owning these cars is never cheap.

An option that might be worth considering is a JW Speaker 7 inch with the Hella clear non fluted lens or fitting the Hella's either with or without the aforementioned kit, or perhaps a Koito projector if it was possible to figure out which one would be appropriate.

I will say that my new Tacoma with either the GE +130's or the Phillips Xtreme H11 halogens are far better than any of the old Cibié's in my old truck or the Bosch currently in the 911.

I have no issue spending a few thousand on this but I'd like to do it right and do it only once.

I should add that I've had more than several email conversations with Stern about this as well. He pointed me toward the Hella pre-mounted in a 7 inch mount from Rallylights.

Sasquatchian said:

I should add that I've had more than several email conversations with Stern about this as well.

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Were you at Luft5 last April? We made the trek out from Arkansas, 5200 miles in total. I sure wish my headlamps were in better working order for that trip!

Daniel and I also corresponded a while back but many of the links were dead and there have been changes in the market. He sent me an updated list yesterday and stated the 9eleven, TRS and Singer headlights are all junk.

The Hella projector assemblies just look far too modern for my taste.

Since I already possess the 87+ H5 trim rings and have a set of Cibie H4s on the shelf loaded with Philips Xtreme bulbs I'm just going to get a set of the 356/Beetle Housings for $60 and see how I like that. From what I gathered, the best thing to do in Mr. Stern's opinion is use the JW Speaker 7" lights in this configuration but I don't think I can deal with the appearance of the cutting edge lamps in a backdated housing!

Mr Merk. No, I was not at Luft5. Tend to stay away from large gatherings. It's interesting that Daniel doesn't like Singer, even if we could get them, as they are using Hellas, but I don't know if they're the HID or LED. I fully understand wanting to keep a vintage look to our cars and the Bosch H4's seem to be the best compromise on performance and aesthetics in that regard. I'm perhaps a little more form follows function regarding our lights and might be willing to order up a couple of JW Speaker 7 inchers. I think that I could get around the look of them if they were indeed as good as some people around here claim they are. I have never been in a car that had them so I have no first hand experience with them. Daniel and I were in the middle of a series of exchanges about two years ago and then my father died. Being trustee is a second full time job. I'm just now feeling I have the time to pursue this again. I guess the advantage of ordering Speaker's from Amazon is that they're easily returnable if I hate them. Still, I'd like someone who has real world experience with both Hella and Speaker to tell me about what the actual differences are and why one might be preferred over the other. Or, I can just stick with the Bosch as I don't drive that car a lot and, frankly, there's so much ambient city lighting at night in and around Los Angeles, that the lights on your car don't make as much of a difference as you think - until you get out of town.

Sasquatchian said:

It's interesting that Daniel doesn't like Singer, even if we could get them, as they are using Hellas

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Probably because there are important factors in the "goodness" of a headlamp, other than what projector it uses.

I'd like someone who has real world experience with both Hella and Speaker to tell me about what the actual differences are and why one might be preferred over the other.

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There's more light within the beam, and the beam is wider, from the Hella BiXenon vs. the JW Speaker Evo 2 LED. This advantage may well evaporate or be reversed when the next JW Speaker lamp (Evo 3) comes out, but the Evo 3's appearance is at least as unconventional as that of the Evo 2.

Wasn't there a dual-H1 lamp for some generation(s) of the 911?

Supur-Lyte said:

Wasn't there a dual-H1 lamp for some generation(s) of the 911?

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Yes, there were, and there was a Cibié version as well. Those are very rare and I'm sure very expensive to match. There's a guy in Sisters, Oregon who restores them. Here's his link: http://www.audettecollection.com/h1-history/ Looks like he is selling a JW Speaker fully assembled into the Bosch housing as well. And, unfortunately, he's also offering to put those behind the fluted Bosch lenses.

Those dual-H1 lamps (or H1 + H2, or H1 + H3) lamps seem to inspire a lot of awe among certain segments of the enthusiast community. A lot of spending, too! The only reason why they ever existed in the first place was the long gap after the single-filament halogen bulbs came out but before the dual-filament halogen bulb (H4) came out. If you wanted low/high beam both in halogen technology, and you had only one headlamp on each side of the car, then there had to be two bulbs and two reflectors behind the one lens. It was expensive and not very efficient, and the H4 bulb both did a better job with much lower cost and complexity. The only reason to seek out the dual-bulb lamps is as a museum piece (on a restored show car, etc). Some of them are quite pretty to look at, and some of them have fancy names (Biode, Amplilux, etc) but they aren't superior from a performance point of view.

Very neat bit of headlamp history. I had never really looked into what early halogen headlamps were like, so its nice to see how things were being adapted. Interesting works, certainly.

Does anyone have an opinion regarding these: https://www.lіghtwеrkz.net/іndеx.ph...rѕ/bі-xеnоn-lеxuѕ-rx350-ѕtі-r-prоjесtоrѕ.html
They are quite a bit shorter than the Hella units and would probably be much easier to squeeze into the 911 buckets, especially without cutting any sheet metal. The price seems very reasonable even adding bulbs and ballasts which do not appear to be included, and they're from a know manufacturer and were OEM on the Lexus.

That's a hard, fast, impenetrable no, for the reasons described here.

The Hella projectors are self-contained and certified or type-approved (depending on version) as fully compliant headlamps. That's a whole different ballgame compared to bare projectors -- or in this case, dubious projectors that might or might not be what the sketchy vendor says they are, given that they'll happily take extra money to hack them with clear lenses (making the projectors worse, not better) and "tuning" for increased blue/purple color fringe (making the projectors worse, not better).

I just returned from the Texas Hill Country Rallye and I saw lots of different headlamp configurations, both good and bad. I saw one car, which was featured in the May edition of Porsche Excellence, that had the early 7" non-fluted housings with the Petersen or Truck-Lite style lamp and it looked decent. https://s3.amazonaws.com/excellence/images/big/7221/gentleman-s-express-8.jpg?1551118728

Most everyone had their lamps shattered from stones tossed by sticky tires during the rallye, including mine. Just extra motivation to do the Cibie conversion. I stopped by Zims Autotechnik in DFW and explained the conversion to Al Zim. We went back in the warehouse and grabbed a 356 bucket and an H5 trim ring. He said he'd be "damned if he didn't learn something new everyday!" He's been working on Porsches professionally since 1971.

Giving up on the 356 bucket conversion. I've regretfully hammered back the factory mounting tabs and drilled holes in my trim ring for adjustment screws....only for the lamps not to fit correctly. Looking at just installing the tried and true OEM euro H4 lamps. Plug and play.

I'll use factory plugs to fill the new holes and cross my fingers that the tabs will go back into shape.

In the meantime I'm driving my car 24hrs to LA for the Luft6 show and another at the Petersen Museum with my cracked H5 lamps still installed.

Huh...that's a bummer. I've seen at least four '87-or-later 911s with the 356 buckets and none of the owners reported any particular difficulty with the installations.

That's good to know about those particular Koito units. So it's back to the Hella units. There seem to be three different projector models worth considering - a Bi-Xenon HID unit, a Bi-LED v1, and a shorter, smaller, lower wattage Bi-LED v2. A few years ago, the consensus seemed to be that the HID version was the better performer compared to the v1 LED, but I haven't found any information regarding this newer v2 LED projector. The LED units would certainly be more convenient but I have no clue as to their real world performance and the v2 would be far easier to fit, or maybe all of those choices will be so much better than the Bosch H4's that the choice doesn't matter. Any ideas here?

Sasquatchian said:

That's good to know about those particular Koito units.

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Sorry, what's good to know about which particular Koito units?

So it's back to the Hella units. There seem to be three different projector models worth considering - a Bi-Xenon HID unit, a Bi-LED v1, and a shorter, smaller, lower wattage Bi-LED v2. A few years ago, the consensus seemed to be that the HID version was the better performer compared to the v1 LED

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Still the case.

but I haven't found any information regarding this newer v2 LED projector. The LED units would certainly be more convenient but I have no clue as to their real world performance and the v2 would be far easier to fit

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That depends on how you intend to try fitting whatever lamps you intend to try fitting. Are you thinking of fabricating your own mount brackets...?

or maybe all of those choices will be so much better than the Bosch H4's that the choice doesn't matter.

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The H4s are not strong performers, but if you're shelling out bucks for lights, might as well get the best performance you possibly can, no?

"Sorry, what's good to know about which particular Koito units?"

Your comments were good to know.

In regard to the Hellas, do you have any first hand experience with both LED versions? What is the practical, real world difference between between the first and second version of the LED units, and how would you describe the difference in performance between the HID's and the LED's.

Yes, we'll be fabbing our own brackets to mount to the existing vestigial tabs for 7" rounds in the 911 buckets. I've got a couple of great aerospace machinists here in L.A. and Hella does provide templates for that purpose. I already have the Bosch H4, which were cheap then and expensive now. The main deal here with the Hella HID units is that they are nearly 182mm long and are going to be a very tight fit. It means we may have to extend the rear of the bucket to get some more room, and there is space behind there - maybe an inch or so.

Ok Virgil, this is good information and very useful. The foreground flooding is a particular problem on a lowered 911 with the headlights lower to the ground than a standard sedan or truck. That helps to guide a decision. I mean, hell, I've been okay with the H4's so the v2 LED Hellas are going to be a huge improvement over those, it seems. As for the color tags, I can see exactly what happened. I quickly copied your text and pasted that and this is the only forum software I've come across that actually copied the pastel background color instead of just the text. At least that what appears to have happened. As for the Speaker models, are you referring to the ones previously mentioned in this thread - the 7" round, or is there another product they're coming out with. And, right now, it might be a moot point if they're not available in a usable configuration. I'll have to find a link on the template but I'll be out of town on family business until the beginning of May and it might have to wait until then. Thanks again.