Improve night driving for $12 - Ford Forums - Mustang Forum, Ford Trucks, Ford Focus and Ford Cars

05-11-2002, 17:50

I have just replaced the 55W H3 driving lights in my EA with 100W H3 bulbs ($6 each) and holy crap they work better than my mates 4wd who has $200 Hella spotties. I also checked the relay to make sure it could handle the extra current and to my suprise it was 40Amp. So if you what to improve your visibilty at night especially on country roads this would have to be an essential yet cheap mod.!!\

galapogos01 · 05-12-2002, 09:46

make sure you have orignal ford headlamps before you do this...

aftermarket ones cant handle the extra heat and MELT, costly experience..

the previous owner did it to my car and put 55W back in when he sold it... eventually i worked out why there was water in the headlight...

05-13-2002, 09:34

One other thing that can increase the heat greatly is having plastic headlight covers. They reduce your lighting efficiency and also increase the heat. Today I'm going to be putting some xenon filled bright white 100W globes. Should be sweet.

Alex

Troutman · 05-15-2002, 10:36

The Goodz, how much will those globes be costing you? I'm all for improving the headlights of my car, but personally wouldn't want to have external driving lights or similar - suits the DA very nicely though.

I was also very impressed with jbolger's fog lights which can't normally be seen during the day because they are mounted inside the front bumper. He said that cost just $12, so let's just say that $24 can make a real difference :)

05-15-2002, 16:19

Well unfortunately I wasn't able to find those xenon globes in H1 100W. Only 55W, and that's not good enough for me, so I settled for 100W Halogens instead. It improved it greatly. The 100W globes were $15 each, and so the high beams match the light output they will be copping 130W globes aswell.

Those little spotlights that jbolger had are in my opinion only useful for looks. They don't improve lighting at night. Unless you can prove me wrong Jason? If you want improved night driving you either gotta get lights like mine or you get more powerful globes. I will also be looking at upgrading all the wiring for all the lights including the original equipment lights for better output.

Alex

05-15-2002, 23:04

Upgrade globes can make a big difference- Zenon 100 and 130's are available-I have them in mine.
Another Mod is to dismantle the headlight assembly, and remove the glass, and clean it inside- i did this recently and what a difference! Be very careful cleaning the chrome like reflectors, as the coating will come of very easily. On mine, the glue on the rubber seal had yellowed, and spread to the surrounding area, giving the whole headlight a yellow tinge, so i removed them and cleaned all the surfaces(scraping and sanding the glass where the seal was in contact), and spray painted the seal silver, as well as the rim on the reflector body that was discoloured. With the clean glass and clean silver grey seals, the whole light looks brand new!

I want to replace the "parker" globes in the assembly(they have a yellow tinge) to match the Xenon headlights, but don't want to use the extreme blue ones that i've seen around- any ideas?
PS I can't believe the stupidity of some of the replacement front parker globes I've seen- RED/ORANGE WHAT THE???

05-16-2002, 10:41

I know the Xenon 100s and 130s are available, but they're only in H4 and H3, I haven't seen them in H1, which the LTD uses. Have you seen H1s and if so where do you get them?

Alex

Troutman · 05-17-2002, 15:17

Well the purpose for small spot lights is in being seen, particularly in bad weather. In foggy conditions, low-mounted lights enable the road ahead to be seen where headlights would reflect back to a degree. But the looks aspect doesn't hurt :)

As for the Xenon globes, I'm just surprised that it is possible to improve headlight performance just for a few bucks - why didn't Ford install these bulbs in the first place?

05-17-2002, 21:06

Like I said before, proper fog lights that are no smaller than the spotties I got on top of the unibars are the only ones that actually improve lighting. They don't really improve other people seeing you nor do they improve lighting. If it's less than 100W and enough to blind you if you stare straight at it then it's rubbish in my opinion.

These xenon globes that we speak of aren't actually xenon gas discharge globes. Proper xenon globes have no filament, just gas, and 1 pair of 35W xenons visually out perform 4 100W halogens. Those 'xenon' globes are really just halogens with a bit of gas inside so it looks white. That's why they're so cheap, if you want a proper xenon system then it'll cost $$$. Why Ford didn't use more powerful globes? I don't know, as far as I'm concerned too much is not enough when it comes to lighting :)

Alex

Troutman · 05-18-2002, 09:27

Thanks for clearing that up mate. I'll keep my eyes open for 100w Xenons...