Brighter headlights

[philadams16V]

Anyone know wot the best bulbs to buy for hella headlamps are, and where to get them from?  I want them as bright as they can go  

                                                       

[Gambit]

pm Rustynuts off here, he will do you an uprated loom for about ?25 delivered, piece of pish to fit and will make amazing difference to even std bulbs

you cant run anything higher that std watt bulbs on current loom or you run the risk of  blowing the light switch

[Dizzie]

I thought the idea of the uprated loom was so you couldn't blow your switch. the relays took all the current out of the switch and you were limited to how phat the new wire is?

[rubjonny]

Isn't that exactly what Gambit just said?  
Once you fit the loom, Philips Vision Plus are pretty damn good.

[Colin]

If you or a friend know anything about electrics, spend ?3 on a 30A relay and use the original wiring to trigger the relay.
Run a positive feed straight from the battery to relay, then relay to bulb, bob's your uncle large amps to your bulbs.
I'm currently running 90/130W bulbs which lite the night nicely.
(although they are illegal, if they are not blue & aligned correctly who's going to check)?

[Dizzie]

ah yeah. sorry. I'll be uprating the loom very soon and keeping standard bulbs. I'll try and take before and after pics to show the improvement of the uprated loom.

[JMallows]

I had a go at this. Did just one side, to compare them... Read in lots of places that theres a voltage drop of 3V, so was expecting around 9-10V. Anyway, i did all the stuff, just to one side... Turned on lights, voltage on left side was 11.7V and on the relay light was  11.75. Seemed vry pointless! This may be cause i didn't connect the dim-dip etc... and prhaps cos the engine weren't on! Thought of this after i'd reassembled it, couldn't be arsed to try again!

[rubjonny]

The main point of the relay wiring isn't to supply more voltage to the bulbs, its to stop your headlamp loom from melting if you use high wattage bulbs.  And to fix dim headlamp problems if your loom is in a bad way.

[JMallows]

Found this out a couple of days ago... However, when this has come up in the past, pretty much veryone has said "matey-matey". Well on there it don't say that, it says theres a 2.5 volt drop, and the uprated loom will give less of a drop??

The main cause of this vaguely dangerous lack of brightness is a 2.5-volt drop between the battery and the bulbs. This is chiefly due to the rather long route the loom takes before it gets to the bulbs. When Andy fitted this loom to his Golf GTi, the voltage at the headlights dropped by only 0.1 volts which allows the full voltage from the battery to get to the headlights

If you measured the voltage before fitting the loom, measure it again and you should see a good improvement in the recorded voltage at the headlights.

Now i'm reeally confused!!

[rubjonny]

Basically, the way it works is:
1. Do you have dim bulbs and/or a voltage drop?
Yes: Make an uprated loom
No: Leave it alone

2. Do you want to use more powerfull bulbs than standard?
Yes: Make an uprated loom
No: Leave it alone