xantia headlights (morettes)

lurchy666 · Post by **lurchy666** » 29 Nov 2009, 12:12

Deanxm wrote:Hi Gents

Maybe not too relivant, especialy now that you are tracking down some later lights but i have morretts on my XM which as Peter has said also suffers in the lighting department.
My advise is this, you dont spend £400 on headlamps because your current ones are a bit dim, you spend £400 on headlamps because you like the look of the lamps but having said that the morretts are a vast improvement (mine have valeo lamps), they are now very good to drive with at night but i do have a slight critisism that may not affect the Xantia but having 6 H1 bulbs shinning away on high beam is fantastic, rabbits dont so much freeze in the headlights as drop down dead , trouble is when going back to main beam it takes a while to adjust with the difference in light output being so huge, ive thought about HID'ing the outer main beam lights to compensate but decided against it, Ive started to dispise HID lights lately and BMW seem to be the worst offender of them all, whats the point in having such bright lights? all it means is the person coming the other way has to upgrade to equaly bright lights to try and see beyond you and you are both being dazzled even more being able to see even less at the crucial moment.
Maybe its because i live on i small island populated by idiots in BMW's who insist on driving down the middle of narrow roads nearly 2feet off their verge while im pushed up into the hedges my side all the while being dazzled by their HID lights, maybe as i get older i become more misserable who knows . Anyway i digress, good luck with your lights.

D

well my idea is now just to leave them untill i find some money in the middle of the road or something as i've already done relays and 100w bulbs so there just about as bright as they can be, and drive down roads where i can use high beam all the time, (theres lots of those around here)

lurchy666 · Post by **lurchy666** » 29 Nov 2009, 12:18

myglaren wrote: If it is legal to have multiple headlights lit simultaneously, why are spotlights now illegal? Carefully aligned spotlights would be a very simple solution.

i think that only applys to low beam (the mulitiple lights thing) cause on high beam i've always been told spots are fine on my granada i had 6 spots the fog lights(wired so they go off with high) and the 4 bulbs of the heads on with high beam and my mate on his granada had his headlights fogs (again wired to go off with high) 8 100w spots on the front of his, and both granada's passed the mots,

Xantidote · Post by **Xantidote** » 29 Nov 2009, 12:27

My 1995 N reg (RP 6794) has the later headlamps.

Lurchy, I think you should try some of the later S1 lamps. I've no complaint about mine, especially since I've done the relay mod, which gave noticeable improvement. If still not good enough, you could replace the standard H1 bulbs with zenon higher light output bulbs, but still on 55 watts. In addition to the relay mod, I uprated the +ve feed wiring to the headlamps (dip only), but the voltage drop on the earthing was quite low, so left the original earthing untouched.

Interested to hear how you get on

lurchy666 · Post by **lurchy666** » 29 Nov 2009, 12:33

well as i said before it could just be me expecting to much from the lights cause i came from a volvo with hids, but when i lost my job i had to find something comfatable and economical thats y i got the xantia,

i've already done the relay mod as when i got it the headlights were only running on 10.7 volts (that was before i even came on here and saw the relay mod) now they are running battery voltage, as far as i can tell theres no volt drop on the earths so i've left them alone,

Kowalski · Post by **Kowalski** » 29 Nov 2009, 15:19

lurchy666 wrote: well my idea is now just to leave them untill i find some money in the middle of the road or something as i've already done relays and 100w bulbs so there just about as bright as they can be, and drive down roads where i can use high beam all the time, (theres lots of those around here)

The 100 watt bulbs have a much larger filament than the 55 watt bulbs, so the headlight can't focus the light so well, despite there being much more light. More light is only an advantage if it goes in the right direction.

Bulbs like the "Philips Vision Plus" and "Osram Silverstar" have a smaller filament which is run hotter than a standard bulb which is how they manage their "50 % more light on the road". The smaller filament burns a little hotter and brighter but the smaller size means the headlight is able to focus it better. I ran Philips Vision Plus in my Xantias, they were an improvement over the previous bulbs although the biggest improvement came from keeping the lenses free from dirt.

There are newer bulbs than the "Vision Plus" and "Silverstar", Osram has the "Night Breaker" and Philips the "X-treme" which claim 90% more light on the road, still at 55W, they might be worth a try.

Xaccers · Post by **Xaccers** » 29 Nov 2009, 16:52

Kowalski wrote:the biggest improvement came from keeping the lenses free from dirt.

You've reminded me, if I didn't wash the headlights on my first Xantia once a week, even though they looked clean their brightness dropped considerably.

Lurchy, I've had a look at the lenses from my old LX and they're the newer style but the rubber has split on one of them so you'd have to transfer that over from your current ones if you'd like them.

lurchy666 · Post by **lurchy666** » 29 Nov 2009, 17:03

unfortually xac i'm on jobseekers at the min so cant afford nothing, lol they expect me to live on 38 quid a week and thats ment to pay for all bills food and everything, dunno y they wont let me have full job seekers of 60 odd quid a week,

Xaccers · Post by **Xaccers** » 29 Nov 2009, 17:09

lurchy666 wrote:unfortually xac i'm on jobseekers at the min so cant afford nothing, lol they expect me to live on 38 quid a week and thats ment to pay for all bills food and everything, dunno y they wont let me have full job seekers of 60 odd quid a week,

Was in the same boat for 6 weeks before the middle of October and that was bad enough on full JSA.
Get on to them for the full whack!
Fingers crossed things pick up for you.
I'm only keeping the lenses incase I get a stone chip etc in one of Cassy's headlights, so they're not going anyway if things do change

lolingram · Post by **lolingram** » 30 Nov 2009, 09:12

also check ur voltage at your lights cause mine were down to 10.7 volts instead of what the battery was, mine needed a relay with a feed from the battery (fused) to the headlights which brightewned them up,

If you give this some thought, it is better to take the feed from the alternator, rather than the battery. When the vehicle is running, the alternator is the prime source, NOT the battery. This can give you another .5V, depending on the wiring loom.

lurchy666 · Post by **lurchy666** » 30 Nov 2009, 12:50

well battery/ altinator should be connected anyway via a big bit of cable

Stunned Monkey · Post by **Stunned Monkey** » 30 Nov 2009, 17:06

There's a world of difference between what a manufacturer is allowed to do and what a user is allowed to do. We only have to pass an MOT every year, and multiple high beam lights certainly isn't part of the test, so there's no law against it, just as there's no law against de-catting a car (correct me if I'm wrong) - the only law is passing the MOT each year.

The light output of a bulb is proportional to the power squared. In other words, to double the output of the bulb, you have to square the power. So twice the o/p of a 55w bulb is 3kW. Absolutely spot on about the longer filament and the focusing problems that has. And speaking as someone with fairly serious light sensitivity, hid lamps fitted to lenses designed for incandescent bulbs are a bloody nuisance - as if HIDs in Chelsea Tractors weren't bad enough.

This website is a mine of excellent information on the subject of the various types of bulbs, glare vs brightness etc

http://www.danielsternlighting.com/

Kowalski · Post by **Kowalski** » 01 Dec 2009, 10:41

Stunned Monkey wrote:The light output of a bulb is proportional to the power squared.

Are trying to say that a 100 watt headlight bulb will produce 4 times the light output of a 50 watt bulb?

Standard car headlight bulbs are approaching the upper limit of efficiency for incandescent bulbs. The efficiency of a bulb (luminous efficacy) is measured in lumens per watt, that is the amount of light output for a given power input. The upper limit of what a tungsten halogen incandescent bulb can give out is something like 25 lumens per watt, you can get better efficiency than that but to do so means running the filament hotter which means a shorter life. An standard power halogen car headlight bulb will produce up to 1500 lumens.

If you want more light output for a given power input, you've got to change to a different technology, this is where HID comes along. HID bulbs can produce upwards of 65 lumens per watt, which is substantially better than tungsten halogen bulbs, however HID systems are lower in power (e.g. 35 watts is typical), but even taking that into account they are producing upwards of 2250 lumens.

In theory, LED lights can be more efficient, I've seen figures quoted of more than 100 lumens / watt. LED efficiency drops off with temperature so they need good cooling / heatsinking to be efficient and typical commercially available LEDs don't achieve efficiency much better than HID once they are at operating temperature.

lurchy666 · Post by **lurchy666** » 01 Dec 2009, 11:26

Kowalski wrote:
If you want more light output for a given power input, you've got to change to a different technology, this is where HID comes along. HID bulbs can produce upwards of 65 lumens per watt, which is substantially better than tungsten halogen bulbs, however HID systems are lower in power (e.g. 35 watts is typical), but even taking that into account they are producing upwards of 2250 lumens.

only problem is with hids yes they will go in xantia headlights i'm sure but because the pattern is on the glass not a projector / reflector type of headlight you'll never get a pettern thats what i found on my volvo thats why i had to up grade from standard headlights to projector type

lolingram · Post by **lolingram** » 01 Dec 2009, 16:18

Stunned Monkey wrote:
The light output of a bulb is proportional to the power squared.

Are trying to say that a 100 watt headlight bulb will produce 4 times the light output of a 50 watt bulb?

As I read things, it is the other way around KoKo. Need to sqaure the power to double the Lumens. 100W is not much brighter than 55W, as well as much the filament being out of prime focus... could produce LESS focussed light on the scene in fact (but a lot more scattered light and dazzle).

Stunned Monkey · Post by **Stunned Monkey** » 01 Dec 2009, 17:23

lolingram wrote:
As I read things, it is the other way around KoKo. Need to sqaure the power to double the Lumens. 100W is not much brighter than 55W, as well as much the filament being out of prime focus... could produce LESS focussed light on the scene in fact (but a lot more scattered light and dazzle).

Yep - that's what I was saying exactly.

Here's some readin gon HIDs

http://www.danielsternlighting.com/tech ... tages.html

Even measuring the light in lumens is misleading.