Projects Quality Headlight Switch

Watts are watts. Whether it is incandescent, halogen or LED. Halogen makes more lumens per watt than incandescent. LED more than halogen. Halogen light is usually "whiter" than incandescent. LED come in a full spectrum (most look like crap). Unless you install higher wattage halogens, the switch is fine. I think an old 7" sealed beam incandescent was about 55w on high beam (ea.). There are halogen direct replacements (~55/45 Hi/Lo). I have a 22A generator, I'll be using 35W halogens (they are out there). I can use the lumen advantage. Mike

 

Ignore everything beyond 'maybe'......! Sorry guys
I'm the king of ..."let's smoke-test-it" lecterk work !
Meaning I'm sorta slow on how electrical stuff works.
The relay part DOES work on hi-beam...low-beams...horn...'lecterk' fans...
After that...you're on your own !
6sally6

 

My Napa HL switch "soiled" the bed on me. So did almost anything else I bought for my Ford from them.

I bought one from Kwik Wire when I got my harness, seemed to be good quality.

Back in the day, we would get junkyard ones from trucks. Those were heavy duty.

 

Most relays sold today fall into the same shitbag as headlight switches
but there are quality relays out there, Ron Francis sells good ones

 

@AccurateMike , I agree. I checked into swapping in halogens in place of the old sealed beams in my project. The stated amp draw was the same or slightly less.
I will mention that if you have ever had a headlight switch fail on you out in the middle of nowhere at midnight, you will understand that researching quality is a much higher priority than price! Pay an extra 10-20 bucks for a known, proven one. I don't have a recommendation for you, and as has been said a lot recently, the average part these days isn't worth a damn!

 

Most of what Mike says here is correct. The one incorrect statement is light spectrum. LEDs aren't full spectrum, although they're getting closer.

Right from the beginning when Edison came up with a viable incandescent lamp, engineers have been working to improve lighting efficiency. Fluorescents showed up first in the teens, then neon. Then you got mercury vapor, followed by metal halide and high intensity discharge (HID). These are all gas-discharge type lamps. On a lumen-per-watt basis they were an improvement, but the cost was a narrower spectrum. By not reproducing full spectrum they increased the lumen output. Color rendition suffered, sometimes terribly. I recall a new elementary school I worked on where they specced metal halide for the gym/lunchroom. There were complaints that food under that lighting could look pretty unappetizing.... school lunch sales suffered. And while heat losses per lumen with these was lower than incandescent, they were still substantial.

Enter LEDs. These offered a 75% reduction in heat loss, but the cost was an even narrower spectrum. They've been working mightily to improve that, but they're not there yet and personally I don't think they'll ever get there.

The human eye evolved under sunlight; that's what it wants to 'see'. Out of all these choices, incandescent and particularly halogen (which is just a souped-up incandescent) is closest to sunlight in terms of color rendition. You may think that's unimportant, but it is. My DD has HID headlights, and deer appear as gray rather than brown making them harder to see at night. And while they're 'OK', they took some getting used to and I still don't believe they're superior to halogens as I'll explain.

HID headlights don't have separate low/high filaments. All they have is one, and it projects the high-beam pattern. To get a low beam, they have a mechanical 'shutter' that drops down to cut off the top of the beam on 'low'. LEDs seem to be all over the place. Some have separate lamps, but while some shut off the low beams on high, some don't. Some simply vary the output between low/high using the same lamp and pattern. This actually reduces your ability to see 'distance'. Again, this goes back to how your eye works. Your pupils open/close in response to how much light they see. Light close to you, they close up. Further away, they open more, letting in more light. Those of you with incandescent/halogen lights you'll notice that on low beam the pattern is close to the front of the car. When you switch to high, the pattern moves away from the car. Because the close light is now gone, your eyes will open more, allowing better distance seeing. Unfortunately, your brain 'sees' that extra close light as 'better' when in reality it's not.

Lens/reflector optics. This is a biggy. First, plastic lenses don't transmit light as well as glass. The very best will be found in premium brands like Cibie or Kioto that use optical quality glass. Second, the optics need to be optimized to the lamp (which is why I'm no fan of 'conversions'). If you're running 7" lights, compromises are made in the optics to allow decent patterns on low/high. Lamp wattage was slowly increased over the years with Detroit finally settling on 50/55 watts for incandescent with one exception. When quad light lighting was introduced in '57, low beam remained at 50 watts but the high beams were dropped to only 35 watts. This was done so that they could still use the existing light switches with their internal 15 amp circuit breakers. This illustrates how much optics matter. Because the inner high beams no longer had to be compromised for low beam there was still a net improvement in lighting performance even at the lower wattage. Replacing a 7" 50/55 watt light with a 55/60 watt shouldn't cause any issues with dim lights. Quad lights are another story...

Headlight relays. The OEMs managed to produce cars for almost 90 years with incandescent/halogen lamps without resorting to relays. If you're having issues with dim lights after installing an aftermarket harness, the problem isn't the lights (unless you're using high wattage 'off road' lights), it's the harness. Most of the relay kits the aftermarket sells are to 'fix' those harness inadequacies, which is why I'm also not a fan of their harnesses. The one exception in headlights is the quad cars. Because of those 35 watt high beams, an upgrade to a full set (all four) of modern halogens with 60 watt highs will require a relay to power two of them to drop the load down on the circuit breaker.

Finally, Mike notes that he's planning on 35W headlights. If those are 6V, those will draw almost 6 amps each...

 

I guess I should have said, "a bunch of colors" (most look like crap), instead. I'm sorry "full spectrum" got your hackles up. I actually worked in lighting and design for a few years, went to Phillips school.
My car is 12V. I am using housings with H4 bulbs. They make 35W 12V H4's, mostly for motor cycles. I built a hand held spot using a 4515, 35W, 6V theatrical pin-spot lamp. It is the brightest I have seen (out shone the cops in my back field once). You can feel the heat from it 5' away. They make a 4515 Halogen version now, purported to be even brighter. When I found that, I wanted to resurrect the light just to see it. Mike