Are H4 Headlights That Much Better? October 27, 2012, 11:11:48 PM On my 87 Bird, I made a new headlight harness with relays, hoping that would improve my dim headlights. It helped a little, but not enough. The next thing I did was to ditch the 9004 bulbs in tabor of supposedly brighter 9007 ones. To try and further help the cause, I bought bulbs that were the next step below Silverstars in brightness. Since the 9007's have vertical filaments and the headlight lenses on our cars are designed for horizontal filament bulbs, the light from the 9007's is pretty unfocused. It just kind of spreads out without doing s good job of shining down the road.My other car, which is an 88 TC has almost new headlight buckets, but I'm still not happy with it's headlight output. I'd really like to fix that. Unlike with my other car, I want to set the headlights on this car up so they're nice and bright. I'm already planning on making a headlight harness with relays for this car using healthy gauge wire, just like I made for my other car. For this car though, I'm wondering if setting it up to use H4 bulbs would be the way to go. I know the low beams on our cars are a paltry 40 watts. Aren't H4 low beams 80 watts? If they are, that seems like it would make a nice improvement over the 9004's I'm using now (I'm planning on using Hella clear bulbs, because they come so highly recommended). The 9007's I installed in my other car are only 55 watts. Wouldn't the 80W/100W H4's melt the headlight bucket (housing) though? Anyone here running H4's in their car that could give me feedback?I'm open to any suggestions here. I really want to resolve this issue guys. I don't have any interest in installing HID's, or projectors though. Thanks in advance for any help! Quote Selected
Are H4 Headlights That Much Better? Reply #1 – October 28, 2012, 12:48:41 AM I have been reading some places where you can use some aftermarket relays off the headlight switch and have the relays send power straight to the lights from the battery, helps making them brighter from having better volts and amp draw I guess, maybe someone will chime in soon. Quote Selected
Are H4 Headlights That Much Better? Reply #2 – October 28, 2012, 04:31:45 PM Standard H4 light bulbs are 55W for low and 60W for hi beams. Quote Selected
Are H4 Headlights That Much Better? Reply #3 – October 28, 2012, 05:56:18 PM http://www.foxtbirdcougarforums.com/showthread.php?33121-(New-Goodies)Need-Your-Opinion-on-Headlight-Color!(Lots-of-Pics) Quote Selected
Are H4 Headlights That Much Better? Reply #4 – October 28, 2012, 07:03:50 PM H4 Sealed Beam H4 on the left, NOS OEM on the right.Projectors put them both to shame though, see sig......... Quote Selected
Are H4 Headlights That Much Better? Reply #5 – October 28, 2012, 08:15:12 PM I don't think they will melt the head light fixture but the higher the wattage the hotter they are.http://www.racinglab.com/pixtremwhitp.htmlDarren Quote Selected
Are H4 Headlights That Much Better? Reply #6 – October 29, 2012, 01:58:14 PM Wow! That H4 does throw off quite a bit more light than the OEM bulb. It looks like the H4 throws a good beam pattern through the OEM headlight housing too. I installed 9007 series bulbs in my other Aerobird thinking that the increased output of the 9007's would be an improvement over the OEM 9004's. Due to the vertical filament, the beam pattern was . Light just went everywhere without any kind of focus down the road. From your picture above, it looks like that wasn't a problem with the H4 you installed. Was it? I'm not looking to go with projectors at this time.Thanks for your help. Quote Selected
Are H4 Headlights That Much Better? Reply #7 – October 29, 2012, 02:39:42 PM Quote from: 88 Blackbird 5.0;401562Wow! That H4 does throw off quite a bit more light than the OEM bulb. It looks like the H4 throws a good beam pattern through the OEM headlight housing too. I installed 9007 series bulbs in my other Aerobird thinking that the increased output of the 9007's would be an improvement over the OEM 9004's. Due to the vertical filament, the beam pattern was . Light just went everywhere without any kind of focus down the road. From your picture above, it looks like that wasn't a problem with the H4 you installed. Was it? I'm not looking to go with projectors at this time.Thanks for your help.I didn't use anything that was Tbird OEM in my H4 picture posted above. The output of that H4 picture came directly from the sealed beam that is posted in the picture above it. When I took that H4 shot my original plan was to install that H4 sealed beam into the OEM Bird housing, then replace the factory diffuser lenses with my clear lenses. That way I would be able to maintain the safe, legal, and useful beam output that the factory spent all of that time designing.Headlight housings are specifically designed for specific bulbs. You can not just change the bulb to a different type and expect the output to anywhere near useful, as you found out with your 9007 experiment. Not only does the improper bulb provide you with poor lighting on the road, but it generally manages to put plenty of light into oncoming traffic's eyes. I know you said in your OP that you weren't interested in projectors, may I ask why? I'm just curious. I spent 6 months and a couple hundred bucks trying to come up with a better option for headlights and projectors were the absolute best option I could find. I can't help but notice that most manufacturers are going to projectors, either HID or halogen, and I feel like that will be the continuing trend due to projectors superiority. Quote Selected
Are H4 Headlights That Much Better? Reply #8 – October 29, 2012, 04:30:42 PM Quote from: T-BirdX3;401564I can't help but notice that most manufacturers are going to projectors, either HID or halogen, and I feel like that will be the continuing trend due to projectors superiority. A lot of people buy them for the looks, even halogen ones. I'm fine with my daily driver's reflector halogen bulbs over any projectors I've seen - the projectors trap a lot of light. The HID projectors in my T-Bird are great, but very lacking in the rain. While the T-Bird wins in rain due to total output, the halogen bulbs are right up there due to the warmer color temperature and higher CRI.I'm getting anxious about being able to try some LEDs in place of the D2S bulbs. Having a warmer color temperature, higher CRI, instant turn-on, flash to pass without shocking the ballast/bulb when it's previously off, bulb lifetime, and shorter headlight depth are all benefits I will love to see on the car. Not to mention that I can also stuff more light into there with adequate heatsinking, and LED technology in the future will allow even more with less heat output. I'm guessing we'll see closer to 200lm/W at higher temperatures with the pace of changes and the technology just around the corner. Having a simple heatspreader that I can bolt to an aluminum headlight housing would make upgrades a breeze. Now if only that person would get back to me about that CNC router I want... Quote Selected
Are H4 Headlights That Much Better? Reply #9 – October 29, 2012, 05:10:53 PM Quote from: Seek;401571 The HID projectors in my T-Bird are great, but very lacking in the rain. While the T-Bird wins in rain due to total output,We will have to agree to disagree here. :D My experience has been the complete opposite. I have nothing but good things to say about projectors. My original thread has plenty of photos comparing the two so I won't flood this one with them. Quote Selected
Are H4 Headlights That Much Better? Reply #10 – October 29, 2012, 05:43:54 PM There are two reasons why I choose to not install a projector set-up. The cost of installing them and the way they look on our cars. I'm not happy with either one. They do throw light down the road though. I'll give you that. Quote Selected
Are H4 Headlights That Much Better? Reply #11 – October 29, 2012, 05:51:34 PM Quote from: T-BirdX3;401577We will have to agree to disagree here. :D My experience has been the complete opposite. I have nothing but good things to say about projectors. My original thread has plenty of photos comparing the two so I won't flood this one with them. The stock lights do suck in our cars, there's nothing else to be said about that, but many BETTER designs have quite effective halogens. Get 14v to the halogens and a 55W bulb puts out a healthy 1400 lumens (each). The warmer color of light in FRONT of the car is similar in luminosity where it needs to be, better for visibility due to lower refraction (after all, the sky appears blue due to the scattering of blue light), but it does not have the width or evenness of projectors. Projectors lose about 1/3 of the light in the projector housing.Half the bulb-rated luminous output, hitting 1/3 the area of the road when compared to projectors...obviously it is brighter. Projectors just look SO much nicer though, and the width of the beam CAN help in limited cirspoogestances. I'll back the tbird into the garage and get some fixed pictures of the projectors versus the stock 9004 bulbs shining outside into the wet/dry pavement (depending on weather at night) and post up in your thread. You will be surprised how mediocre the HID projectors become in comparison As for this thread, what voltage are you getting at the bulb with the lights on? How are your headlight lenses and reflector? The lights are junk if the reflectors are shot. Also if you're doing comparisons with the car off or at idle, if your alternator isn't putting out enough power, it will hurt them even more. Quote Selected
Are H4 Headlights That Much Better? Reply #12 – October 29, 2012, 05:55:39 PM Quote from: 88 Blackbird 5.0;401580There are two reasons why I choose to not install a projector set-up. The cost of installing them and the way they look on our cars. I'm not happy with either one. They do throw light down the road though. I'll give you that. Agreed. They really need a custom single-piece headlight assembly to be fabricated to make them work on the looks. Mine looks about the same as X3's, and even if I make clear lenses for the other two lights, it will still look odd. I hope to try some initial prototyping of a single-piece headlight within the next 12 months, most likely sooner. If anything, an easier two-piece with non-fluted lenses would also be a huge improvement.You can get the parts for fairly cheap if you look around though. The problem area is modifying the headlights, getting the projectors aligned, and cutting into the header panel. Quote Selected
Are H4 Headlights That Much Better? Reply #13 – October 29, 2012, 05:57:18 PM Everything is going to be optimized on the car for headlight output. I'm going to install a relay harness that sends 14.4 volts to the headlights, I'm going to use 10 gauge wire to make the harness and I'm going to ground each headlight directly. That way, I'll be able to get the optimum performance from the bulbs. The housings are mint. Quote Selected
Are H4 Headlights That Much Better? Reply #14 – October 29, 2012, 06:09:00 PM Quote from: 88 Blackbird 5.0;401580There are two reasons why I choose to not install a projector set-up. The cost of installing them and the way they look on our cars. I'm not happy with either one. They do throw light down the road though. I'll give you that. Fair enough, I was just curious. :D Quote Selected
Topic: Are H4 Headlights That Much Better? (Read 4494 times)
previous topic - next topic
