I supposedly have the same 7" sealed beam head lights [Sylvania Star Bright] in two of my cars...In one car [ot Comet] I am pretty happy with them, good near and distance and spread and lighting road signs...In the other car [shoebox] they are just junk, marginal near with terrible spread and distance is bad on ground and lighting up road signs..Shoebox is higher but can't believe 5/6" more height could make them that bad, I have to be missing the boat somewheres....This is on low beams and when I compute the head light angle from the alignment diagram they all fall very close to 1/2° down..So how does every one get to the pattern they like?
Find a level surface and a vertical wall or garage door. Park the vehicle close to the wall and, using the masking tape, mark the low-beams' horizontal centerlines. Mark the vertical centerlines of each beam and the center of the vehicle with masking tape. Marking the vehicle centerline is helpful to determine side to-side alignment, or lack thereof. Move the vehicle 25 feet straight backwards. Turn the horizontal-vertical adjusting screws to position the low beam hot spots two inches below and to the right of the taped centerlines. Adjust high-beam hot spots below the horizontal line and slightly to the inside of both beam centerlines relative to the vehicle centerline.
That's how you do it with two headlights, although I'll note that high-beam alignment will be whatever you have after you get the lows adjusted right. You can cheat the lights a bit higher if you're running a headlight with good optics and a very sharp low beam cutoff like a Cibie but don't do this with a off-the-shelf sealed beam; you'll get 'flashed' if you do.... If you have a four-light system, you can run the high beams higher.
Angle Drive I been looking for an area like you describe, got kicked out of the last two I tried, something about trespassing after business hours...I'm going to look around tonite..
I go to a garage with headlamp aiming equipment. No thing like the real thing. Also, I run relays on everything that I own with a headlamp, including my motorcycles. All switches cause current loss. The older the switch, the more likely it is. Using Sylvania Silver Star headlamps overloaded the modern switch in my Jeep, causing it to cut out, even on the low beams. After the relay install, that stopped, and the headlights were brighter.
A relay is a switch..... just one that's electrically operated. Now I'll agree with the motorcycle use, as most bikes have pretty cheesy electrical controls. Cars, not so much. While you will run into an occasional switch that may have issues, 90% of dim lighting problems are inadequate wiring feeding the light switch and/or the lights. Most of the other 10% will be poor grounding.
I aim the high beams, not the low beams, and I try to get them pointed straight ahead. A test drive at night will tell me if they need to go up or down a hair. I have no idea what angle they are. Fun on the Suburban, because I'm always loading and unloading stuff in the back, and driving long distances in it. I've stopped at rest stops at night a few times to tweak them yet again.
Really? I never knew that.... More to the point, it is a switch that is designed to handle more current than the 50-60-70+ year-old one in the dashboard.
The ten cars we have here...they seem to match the numbers he gives. That damn Mopar is the only one with dim headlights.
But if you don't need the extra current capacity, it's not needed. Do a voltage drop test at various points in a circuit; I'll guarantee that the drop across the switch will be miniscule unless the switch on the verge of failure, in which case should you even be using it? The relay by itself doesn't help, it's the dedicated circuit used to feed the relay is what does the job because the factory (and most aftermarket suppliers I'm sad to say) use barely adequate wire size allowing excessive voltage drop. There are some exceptions; if you bump headlight wattage up beyond the rating of the built-in circuit breaker that most headlight switches have, you'll need to use a relay on at least the high beam part to avoid tripping.
From years of troubleshooting electrical problems, both in cars (as a hobby) and as an electrician (now retired).
I have spliced relays into the extant wiring on almost 70 vehicles, in order to support higher current headlights, from brand new, all the way back to 1947. I never replaced any of the wiring, unless the whole car was getting rewired as well, or the wiring had or was about to fail. Remember, the plural of anecdote is not data.
If your state has inspections or even if they don't, find a place that uses the equipment to aim headlights. Takes the guess work out of something simple.
Its odd since the time cars stopped using kerosene head lamps and went electrical there has not been all these electrical fires due to inadequate wire size used by the car makers.
'Inadequate' is a relative term. It's all about controlling voltage drop. An example... Let's say you have two 60 watt headlights. Running #16 wire to them (pretty typical of OEM), with a 8 foot length of wire from the switch to the lights the drop is about 2.5%. Bump that up to #12, and now the drop is under 1%. Most electrical gear will tolerate a roughly 5% +/- voltage and still work right, although the less the drop, the better it will work. Add in the factor that if connections degrade over time (and they can), additional losses are added and pretty soon you've got 5% or more drop. And these drops will add up; if you have a 2% drop in the wire from the solenoid to the fuse panel, 1% from the panel to the switch, then 2.5% from the switch to the lights, now you have a 5.5% drop. This will show up in dimmer lights. This will also result in about 75 watts of 'loss' but it isn't really lost; it's converted to heat. 75 watts spread out over the full circuit length (solenoid to lights, let's say 15 feet) will be 5 watts per foot of wire, or just enough to make the wire slightly warm. I'll also note that this 'loss' will be added to your charging system load, so that's roughly 5 amps doing nothing but heating the wire. The OEMs use barely adequate wire for cost reasons; smaller wire costs less, and if you're building a million harnesses a year, there's big savings to be had.
5% voltage drop causes incandescent/halogen lamp to reduce light output by about 15%. 10% drop looses about 30% light output. I've measured a few cars, none has had as little as 5% voltage drop between battery and headlights, some have been over 20% making tham seem more like candles than 55-60W halogen lamps. Most car headlights can have the light output improved ALOT with a relay and heavy wires straight from the battery. Measure the voltage at the battery and at the lamp (still connected and turned on) with the engine running, that quick check tells you if there are gains to be made.
I got to thinking that I wasn't going to get any wheres with the Sylvania bulbs so I changed them out to a pair of Napa Brite Lights [wagner]..Noticed the beam higher at same alignment setting on the garage wall..Went to cruise and on the way home [dark now] I saw a big difference, way more spread and distance...I will have to adjust them down and to right some but at least I have some thing to work with..I am thinking about a relay but don't think it would do that much as I have a 30A toggle switch; wire size is 14ga..Lights are supposed to be 55W on low beam so should that be around 5amp draw for each bulb? Going by my amp gage it reads 15amp draw [halogen tail lights] total [seem about right?]with engine off..Engine running will cover the draw..To get 12ga wire to the head lights would be a major job but I think I have an un used extra 14ga wire in the loom originally intended for aux lights or what ever so that would be a boost but at 10amp draw for the head lights should I worry?
Somewhat true unless you are running high draw headlights to be able to see down the road at night as I do in all my rigs. Primary thing on the relays for me is that now I am not replacing a burned out dimmer switch every six or less months. I've used the garage door thing to aim lights but just as often wheel out on the dirt road that runs down beside the farm and fine tune them
If you have a problem with new dimmer switches not lasting, just get one from an old car or truck and use it....they really did make them better in the old days.
A few years ago, an older gentleman gave me a Ford van, this was in the back. Stop by Seb, and we can adjust your lights !
As I mentioned before, start the car and turn on the lights, measure the voltage on the battery, then measure the voltage at the lamp (still connected and on, needs to draw current to cause normal voltage loss). Compare the numbers, the bigger diffrence, the more light you're loosing. The switches, wire size etc. might be great, but that doesn't say much about the length of the wires, all connections, grounding and so on. Measuring the voltage gives a very quick and clear answer about how well the system works.
My VW used to have the fuses that were pointed on the ends; more often than not, giving them a quick spin in the fuse holder would clean the contact point and eliminate any resistance that built up at that connection, especially when it was on a 6v electrical system. I eventually upgraded to 12v and blade fuseboxes, but I still find pulling and reinstalling a fuse will help improve any electrical function.
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