Headlight for my 85GT

[casper 1999]

Hi guys, I've been reading some old posts about the headlight problem (brightness) on our cars and was very disappointed in the options being talked about. Again they were old posts and I noticed that there was little to no progress on brighter lights so I quit reading and decided to ask if there has been any real advancements recently in the area of brighter headlights? I love my Fox but can't stand not being able to see at night so I really want to find a solution to this problem. Thanks for any input.

[erratic50]

My first suggestion is to turn down the brightness on the interior lights.

My second - get brand new halogen lights. Many of the old bulbs are not halogen and this makes a HUGE difference.

Third - readjust your headlights. Make certain the are in proper adjustment - all four bulbs. And by proper I mean go out on a deserted road and put light where you need it. My inner left (bright) bulb lights up the left low/high beam leaves off and into the ditch. Right does this on the right. Right fog light lights up white line about 60 feet in front of the car, i stop and lower it if there is fog. Left fog lamp does this to the center line.

Forth - make certain your fog lights are in good working order and use them all the time with low beams

Fifth - with your car running check at voltage of each bulb with the headlights on and engine running. Now ground to the battery and check ground quality. Now go positive to the battery and ground at the light and check ground quality. There should be NO noticeable change. If there is something is wrong.

Make certain your battery and alternator are up to task. With your blower on high and wipers an radio going blinkers should not be slow. If they are add 100 rpm to idle speed and retest. If they still are you need more voltage and amperage capacity and that's causing the dim lights.

Personally after getting tired of burning up dimmer switches and headlamp switches and flickering on/off lights during long trips and getting sick of fighting with overheated connnectors I switched to a ford starter solenoid up front for my low beam headlights. They work outstanding! As well as my 2016 MKX if not better.

I plan to do this across the board for high beam and fog lights also as time permits.

When I am all done power will come straight from the battery on a heavy duty stereo fuse and branches to each of the three starter relays with a distribution block. Dim headlight signal goes to on signal on one now with output going to dim bulbs. I will repeat for highbream and fog lamps.

Ground sucked on my lights for for some reason. All of my headlight grounds are now ran straight to the battery - this was probably the biggest improvement. Especially when trying to run halogen bulbs which require more current than standard bulbs. For me the stock ground was marginal at best.

These are my suggestions for excellent headlights. I've driven my car nearly 400K personally an these are my experiences for what they are worth.

As a guy that drives fast pretty much habitually I would have been a dead duck long ago without awesome headlights! San Francisco to Iowa boarder on I80 averaging well over 100 mph will never be considered a safe occupation, but it would have ended really badly without great headlights.

Heres hoping you also are not putting up with stock brakes. For me stock brakes were an even bigger joke than the 85 mph speedometer so I've fixed both of those too..

Follow my suggestions on lights and they will work great.

[xctasy]

Its easy...use DOT illegal European replacement lamps with replaceble bulbs.


Or steal the 1987 Chevy Caprice integrated lamps.


Step 2, is totally illegal, but you'll get away with it.
Go HID.

Unless you use a Mazda, Lexus, or BMW HID leveling system, you'll be DOT illegal.


They bend on European replacement bulns, but if you use HID's without self levelling, the book can get thrown at you.

I bought two self leveling units in 2014, and did some development work on making my own articulated leveling kit since there is just enough space to motorise the adjustment fulcrums. Since trucks still use these lights, I thought, great idea.

However, I had an accident, and wrote my car off when my gagly knee hit the pullout knob going over a bridge bump. The armco rail took care of my intentions to revolutionise Four Eyed Lighting.

Meantime, read this...

How to do it?

First you need 4x6" Halogen semi sealed H4 or H7 headlamp bulbs in the daimond crystal clear set.

Or these H7 bulb items

Then buy the HID upgrade.

Or shop some place like this http://www.blindinghid.com/b.php?bul...tang&year=1981

Remember, you can't wire in series, and you have to use an HID ballast box. Install ballast assembly into headlight housing (use double sided tape/velcro or screw in place).

The normal http://www.prostreetlighting.com/pro...N-KIT-4pc.html


HID lights are not compatible or legal in the US according to the DOT requirements. In Canada, you'll get away with H4's with replaceable bulbs, just like I will in New Zealand. If your in France, you can run H4 lamps off a Renault A310, and get the best lighting money can buy. It won't be US legal though.

Please note all HID retro-fits are technically illegal through-out all of the US, Canada, the EU, Australia.

See http://www.danielsternlighting.com/t...nversions.html

That doesn't mean you can't do the HID swap, its your car, but there is no headlamp levelling circuit to work in with the 6-1/2" quad lamps. The HID lamps must be adjustable for vehicle ride, and the bare minimum requirement is a Dorman's generic $69 Aftermarket Replacement (AM-AutoParts) # 924-755 as used on the HID/Xenon Lamped Mazda 6, RX-8, Toyota Prius, Tacoma, Lexus post 1998 Lexus LS400 and all LX470's, IS300, ES300, ES330, RX330, RX350, RX400h.

That system uses one rear offside sensor on front drive cars like GS or ES330's, while a rear drive specialty like the RX-8 or rear drive Lexus LS430 has two offsides front and rear. An LX 470 SUV has four. Its hooked to the suspension by a rod end, and then the front lamp housing has to get a motorized adaptor to level the front lamps based on ohms resistance from the rear sensor. At the very least, one offside leveling sensor at the back is just a strain gage, and as the suspension is loaded or the car accelerates or banks hard through a corner, the ohm rate goes up, and the headlamps are angled downward to avoid dazzling the on comming driver.

Hella and Siemen have there own retro fit for German cars that works the same way, but the Fox Four Eyes have no provision for a level sensor at the back, nor a motorized headlamp leveling system, and although you can fit HID's easily to a replaceable bulb H4 non sealed beam lamp, they aren't compatiable with the frosted glass pattern H4 lenses have.

The whole idea is to respect the on coming driver.

Going back a step, HID's are very efficient, and setting them up is just a case of finding any HID specialist, and having them fit HID's with the right lenses and connectors. I don't wanna be a kill joy, but I've spent 14 years doing state highway road inspections, and when our Kiwi market Mitsubishi L300 and JDM Import Delica forward control vans hit town with these lights in 1993, the high beams could blind drivers, the low beams could too because they had no leveling device. Then the 94 BMW 7 series got them, and then the 98 LS400 Lexus. The Germans and JDM cars got headlamp leveling hardware to go with the bulbs, and the systems started working quite well. Unfortunately, even the headlamp levelling hardware, especially the suspension strain gages, are not reliable, and so the new replacements sell for a tenth of the prie of the orginal Lexus items to ensure the HID systems are safe.

Untill there is a retro fit quad 6-1/2" headlamp levelling system, HID's will remain illegal.

[xctasy]

hERE'S THE cH**Y WAY...

Here's one I sold:

[erratic50]

Depending upon where you live, there is both what's legal and what you'll get by with.

The bulbs I suggested are legal here and as a matter of fact are about all you can find on the shelf at the parts store.

Ive never gotten so much as a warning ticket for my lights being setup the way they are. Much of that has to do with the way I've set brights vs low beam. If low beams were set how my brights are there is NO way anyone would get by with it.

FYI on 85-86 if you space the low beam light forward even 1/4" it unshrouds far more of the light at the edge of the bulbs and does a better job of lighting up the ditches.

Another trick to get more light is to increase the voltage at the lights. Use my relay trick plus a 14.6 volt 1/2 farad capacitor inline, for example.

[erratic50]

HID thread
http://vb.foureyedpride.com/showthre...adlight-thread

[dagenham]

Has anyone just put in a set of the LED lights? They make them DOT legal now for in the right ones.

[erratic50]

LED makes a lot of sense today actually.

Mine arent broke so I am not going to fix it. But for those who haven't remediate the crappy ground and poor positive lead current capacity they hold great potential.

Why make 1000's of lumens with thousands of watts when you can do it with a few hundred watts.

[xctasy]

Has anyone just put in a set of the LED lights? They make them DOT legal now for in the right ones.

LED's with the right housing, probably legal for a title inspection and none but a zealot would knock you back, but not to the letter of the DOT law. But DOT lighting is tough, even putting GTS covers invalidates DOT law

HID's, not unless they have leveliing.

Depending upon where you live, there is both what's legal and what you'll get by with.

How true!

You'll get away with a lot, its impossible to police unless someone creates a costly edict. That won't happen, since the amount of pre 85 quad lamped cars has dwindled to a low.

Let your conscience be a light unto your path,

but think of the other poor dumb a$$ in the oncomming lane.

DOT law is what it is. They have it so foreign cars aren't being dumped with dangerous lighting. If there was another 1941 style potential for blackouts, the provisions in law no longer allow reduced light performance like back in 1939. That's where the non replaceable, non hooded sealed beam law came from, to reduce beam spread and being a Kamakazie fighter planetarget.

1985 was the liberalisation of a 1941 restrictive law. A Patriot or whatever Star Wars missle encampment you've got will do the rest these days.

No one should be kept in the dark and feed on bovine scattology regarding the law, though. Its very specfic about headlamp dip angle and cut off pattern on low beam for mutual safety on the road.


For instance, Right Hand Drive cars have the headlamp bias all wrong for a proper Left Hand Drive country.

You really don't want Kiwis or Aussies on a Road trip bringing there old RHD Falcons with blinding low beam patterns on to the US Highway net work....anything imported has to be checked, and that DOT law looks after the interests of everyone in terms of safe night driving.

Its easy to fix that stuff with a quick inspection, and a swap of light lenses or bulb hoods.






Photo Courtesy: Photography by Richard Lentinello The Great Australian Road Car - 1975 Ford Falcon XB GT

[erratic50]

I do think about the guy in the other lane. That's why much of my wide and long light pattern are tied to high beam which I use when I'm not meeting a car.

most of what's done for low beams is simply maximizing the reliability of the power source for what it's worth.

[casper 1999]

Thanks for the input,but to be honest that all sounds way to complicated for an electrically challenged person such as myself. I was hoping that a modern "Plug-n-Play" option had come to the Foxbody crowd but it doesnt look like it. I'll chk on the aim of the bulbs and maybe mess with the stance of the car to see if I can get some acceptable sesults.

[xctasy]

Thanks for the input,but to be honest that all sounds way to complicated for an electrically challenged person such as myself. I was hoping that a modern "Plug-n-Play" option had come to the Foxbody crowd but it doesnt look like it. I'll chk on the aim of the bulbs and maybe mess with the stance of the car to see if I can get some acceptable sesults.

You can devise a plug 'n' play, but you'll have to get other people interested. You'd need 25 people, and you'd use the RX-8 system with just one level sensor. It uses the same sensor as the Lexus, but the sensors are only 62 dollars because Lexus like to charge you 407 bucks and put 345 American dollars per sensor into there profiit margin.

The only limitation is the main beam level control at the Quad lamp frame. The cost of running a Lexus type of set up on a Fox is really only two wheel sensors, and two articulated level control boxes, which already exist. Going for the jugular, you just need to do the full HID swap, which is just replacement lamp housings and the systems to generate the right lamp excitation.


Any Quad Headlamp vehicle from a Subaru Brat to a Kenworth could use the same system.


When I calibrated my wheel sensors, it was very easy top create an input voltage or resitance to adjust the light angle. Its only got to change the light slope on crests and troughs of vertical curves, or under load changes or acceleration. Its not rocket science. An RX-8 Mazda just has one level sensor to control both lights. . You could even do it in Peel via your cell phone.




Here is how the sensors fit. Just one side of the car, and on cars that don't cary high trunk payloads, just one sensor is required. On station wagons, two is best. .




It then levels up or down based on the sensor positions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TD79Rv85l4w




http://www.evansweb.info/2009/11/23/...sensor-repair/


Here are the sensors https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvorvYF4lhU


A good source of auto leveling motor is from any Lexus HID headlamp. .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TD79Rv85l4w