I am thinking of upgrading my stock H5006/H5001 lightbulbs. Yes they are already halogen but I would like something brighter. I found by dinking around a Hella conversion kit but wondered what you guys and gals are running, if anything Thanks
Cibie if you want the best; optical quality glass lenses, metal reflectors, top drawer all the way. I had a four lamp set in a OT '70 Montego, the best headlights I've ever owned. Not easy to find, I buy mine here: http://www.danielsternlighting.com/products/products.html
A lot of guys upgrade to halogen or other light bulbs and then find they are disappointed in the brightness a good part of that can be fixed by adding relays to take the load off the old switch.Give the section "A current topic" a read here: http://www.watsons-streetworks.com/tips When I added the relays I was blown away by the improvement.
Mr. Stern is highly opinionated, but he really is extremely knowledgeable about headlights, and will point you in the right direction for the best lighting.
I had a set of Cibie's once too and really like them. Actually they were on a 4 headlight system and I used the Cibie's for high beams and Lucas on the lows.... worked very well. I haven't had a chance to try them yet, but there are also some new LED's coming on the market that might be worth looking at, and would have a much lower power draw than what you have been using.
Part of the key to better lighting is getting full voltage out at the lights. Stern's wiring diagrams are the best for that purpose. I bought some Cibie lights, relays and in-line fuses from him about 12 years ago for my '40 Chevy. All of that made a great difference. Since then I do all the headlight wiring that way. It improves run-of-the-mill halogen lighting, but the real improvement was in the optics of the Cibie units.
One big advantage to the Cibies is they do use off-the-shelf halogen lamps. There's a lot of new lighting types on the market as 'conversions' (very few of which are DOT legal) but all or nearly all use proprietary lamps or are sealed units, so in the event of a failure that really limits your options. I'm on a vintage motorcycle site, and the members there are constantly experimenting with these. The main reason is looking for lights that do draw less power; when your bike charging system can only put out 20 amps max, it's not hard to exceed it's capacity. Their results are generally poor in terms of lighting that's safe for both the rider and oncoming traffic. One pitfall to avoid is any sort of 'conversion' that uses a different lamp type in an existing lens assembly (like a HID into a halogen lens). A good lens is optimized for a specific lamp output, changing type throws the optics off. There are some effective DOT-legal HID and LED lights out there now, but you'll blanch at their prices; one guy just got a LED headlight with very good performance.... on sale, $170 each; list was $700!! And it uses 3 amps instead of 5; while that may be important on a bike, that a pretty expensive 'saving'. It's also a sealed unit with no replaceable parts. And these also don't look at all 'traditional', so there's that...
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