Brighter headlights

[Gratsoy]

[bluebus86]

add a relay for each bulb.

of course clean up or replace all connectors. test for voltage drop across each connection with the light on, to determine if your connection is clean or tight.

use of a halogen bulbed sealed beam will help a lot, but only if you do the above items first!!!! This is a step below going to H4 and such but at a significant price savings. these halogen sealed beams cost little more than standard bulbs, but are much brighter, assuming they are gettting the juice they need, hence relays and good connections.

proper aiming is also very important, often over looked.


old high hour bulbs can be very dim, bulbs do degrade with use, keep that in mind.

I have done the above, removed voltage drops, added relays and installed halogen sealed beams (I bought them for a buck each at the wrecker, tested at the wrecker, bought a few spares , used the best and converted four of my old cars to halgens for under 12 bucks with spares!


good luck

ps older American trucks have these bulbs that fit the Bug in them so look for older trucks at the wrecker, you can usually see "Halogen " writ on the bulb if it is one, or see the little bulb inside the big bulb thru thru the lens.



good luck
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[KTPhil]

[Eric&Barb]

A few decades ago when the new H-4 halogen bulbs came legally onto the USA market. We have a 1961 Beetle that has been in the family as far back as the 1970s and possibly earlier that had terribly weak lights and signals. Tried just one H-4 headlight bulb and could not see the difference between it and the older standard bulb. Went thru the wiring cleaning and tightening, and noticed some improvement. Finally after going over all the connections for the second or third time, checked the headlight bulb wiring. Some of the headlight bulb sockets have each terminal slipped in such a way as one can carefully slide a small slot tip screwdriver inside the socket and have the terminal pop back out of the socket. Someone had wanted to remove the fender and not cut up the headlight wiring, so they popped each wire out of the socket, to slip the smaller bundle of wires/terminals out of the fender. Problem is when the fender and wiring were put back, the wires were mixed up into the socket. This resulted in wiring where all four filaments of both bulbs lit up at the same time, and the added wattage of all the filaments running would draw down the voltage thru the entire wiring system. After that the H-4 worked great, and even the old standard bulb shown brighter than ever.

Have also seen a fully restored 58 Westie that had a NOS regulator put on only a year before. The owner of the bus would not drive it at night unless it was very well lit streets. Regulator would only go as high as 6.2 volts instead of the 7.2 volts required to even fully charge up the battery. Plus the floor mounted dimmer switch for some reason always put 2 volts to one set of filaments in the headlights and 4 volts to the other set of filaments. Plus bus taillights are terrible for grounding properly. Added in ground wires from each taillight to the battery grounding point on the body and running lights back there and signals suddenly became super bright and both taillight did not flicker at the same time.

So go thru it all and keep looking for the last hurdle to fix!
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