[Ricky_63]

ALL of my cars have 90/100's & they are all doing a great job. Osram / Narva / Hella, of which I think they are all at par. Wiring & relay is adviseable. So far seen nil damage on any of the lights. But I must admit I do not have a LOT of night driving...

Auxillary driving lights are highly reccomended for those doing a lot of night highway travel.
Hope this helps



Cheers

[torquecurve]

Planning to do a HL upgrade for my car. I have a H1 (High) and H7 (low) setup. Both lamps are 55W.

Most of my driving is late evening and early morning (4 am) . Mix of Highway and City roads. I am a low beam guy and use the low beam 80% of the time.

My options -
1) High beam stock bulbs - Low beam Osram NB
2) High beam Philips Crystal vision - Low beam Osram NB (my preference)
3) Both lamps Philips CV.

Please suggest any other alternatives. I dont want to put in higher wattage bulbs.

The Crystal Vision are for the look mostly!

[swiftnfurious]

Originally Posted by bullboy

My 100/130 upgrade melted both the head lamp casing.
Lesson learnt :New Ikon will not support 100/130.

Didn't you have ceramics holders for this? I would say 130 is too much for a car. I would suggest you to go with a 100W bulb at the max. Also I believe 130W will cause heavy heating compared to 100W.

[bullboy]

I used Lucas TVS relay with ceramic holders. I wanted to go for 90/100 but many told that ford having better components will be ok with 100/130.Even 100/130 wasn't giving me proper illumination.

[bullboy]

I removed the relay and found that the holder wire is also melted and The lamp leg is blackened on RHS.
Any one have any idea about this .

[headers]

^^^

It appears that the bulb was not secured properly into its socket. This has caused arcing leading to the blow out!

BTW, is 90/100 not sufficient lighting?

Cheers

[bullboy]

^
I checked when removed all the legs were inside the holder.
Even 100/130 wasn't adequate , the culprit might be headlamp design dont know.Now in a soup.

[torquecurve]

Originally Posted by bullboy

^
I checked when removed all the legs were inside the holder.
Even 100/130 wasn't adequate , the culprit might be headlamp design dont know.Now in a soup.

100/130 should be way more than adequate (rally lighting!). Did you upgrade the wire harness as well? From the pics it looks like you did not (could be wrong). It is possible that you did not upgrade to the correct guage. Also, resistance of the circuit increases with a higher watt bulb.

Please read some articles here

Daniel Stern Lighting Consultancy and Supply

It is very informative and will answer your queries.

You are lucky that your car did not catch fire due to a short circuit. I suggest you go for HID/ Xenons instead. Safer if you want a lot of light or just add a couple of Hella FF55.

[JustCause]

Originally Posted by bullboy

I removed the relay and found that the holder wire is also melted and The lamp leg is blackened on RHS.
Any one have any idea about this .

Is the relay even rated for 130W power?

I don't see any marking on the cover.

[YaeJay]

Is there anyone that has a pair of hellas after market driving lamp fixed on to their car, without the add on crash guard bumper. Does everyone feel the best bet is to upgrade the stock headlamp set up and not got in for a pair or two of add ons? I am only interested in driving lamps and not the spot lamps, there is a huge difference between the beam pattern and throw. I am open to Neolites too. If someone has a good setup on a car, please post pictures!

Ps: My idea is I do not want to mess up with the stock setup. I hardly drive at nights. just a few occasional trips within city. Stock *crap* is good enough. I would really miss a pair of fogs, a low driving lamp and a pair of decent driving lamps around the deserted ghats that tend to darken pretty soon. I am interested in the different ways to mount a pair of hella or the like lamps on a car. In other words the clamp, bracket set up. ( Also know, cars do not look good with 2 or 3 pairs of aux lamps, but I am all about being practical! )

[Dinesh_Malhotra]

Originally Posted by bullboy

^
I checked when removed all the legs were inside the holder.
Even 100/130 wasn't adequate , the culprit might be headlamp design don't know.Now in a soup.

so generally this 'no adequate light' from headlight is synonymous with FORD in India i believe.

my Ford Figo also suffers from the same issue and it becomes really tensed while going on night drives especially on places filled with ghats and high terrain.

guys do let me know if any options that i could try. i don't mind picking up a hole in my pockets for HID too, but need to whom should i come in contact within Navi Mumbai or Mumbai to get the work done

regards

[bullboy]

I was told by the installer that the relay is for 100/130 and is a plug and play , no need to change anything else. One end of the relay was plugged to the stock output holder and i believe the extra power was drawn directly from the battery as the relay had input from the battery.
The same setup is running on my friends bolero without any issues for more that a year or so. He recommended me the installer.
Infact the bulb had more illumination than the stocks,but not adequate for night driving at least for me which i suspect might be of the dome design or may be the windshield film is blinding.
Now that the top part of the dome is melted, I need to change both the headlamps,Not sure whether the dome itself will be available or not.

[honeybee]

Way back there was a guru at Indiacar.com, by the name S K Gupta. I found his answers to be quite level headed. For most of the queries about headlight bulb upgrades, his response was to first check the reflectors of the headlamps and then to align the headlamps properly.

It's inconceivable that the OEM bulbs are useless. It may happen that over a period of time they are worn out and need to be replaced. Fitting extra driving lights or upgrading to higher rated bulbs may not solve your problems if the headlamp reflectors and/or alignment are bad.

[sajjt]

Originally Posted by swiftnfurious

Didn't you have ceramics holders for this? I would say 130 is too much for a car. I would suggest you to go with a 100W bulb at the max. Also I believe 130W will cause heavy heating compared to 100W.

Normally most of the head lamp reflectors are capable of handling 90/100W without any issues and many of the fellow members are running with that years. But here its too much to for a reflector which was originally designed to handle 55/60W. 100/130 can be used with metal reflectors with glass domes, not for a FF front glass and acrylic reflectors. I strongly doubt the installers common sense by do so.

Here the upper portion of the reflector is getting melted and that means its the low beam (100W) caused this and things might have worse if it was the high beam with the same duration. Considering this, I dont think if this was replaced with a 90/100 and using the high beam for long duration, it may create issues in future too.

Ikon owners running on 90/100W please come forward for a testimony

Ceramic holders offers better contacts even if the bulb temp goes higher as it never gets melted with the usage of a higher watts bulb and it there's very little to do with a reflector melting.

Originally Posted by bullboy

I removed the relay and found that the holder wire is also melted and The lamp leg is blackened on RHS.
Any one have any idea about this .

Your holder was just a standard one which cant take the heat of even 90/100 and its got melted and there by it started loosing its contacts gradually and started arcing in the bulb pins. Now you can do the math

Due, you have missed one important thing before going for a major bulb upgrade: A good wiring harness with Ceramic Holders which is must even for 90/100 as it produces lot of heat which can't be supported by a standard holder as on long drives it produces good amount of heat and that's a rule of thumb in bulb upgrade. And this is why I commented about your installers capability. Stay away from these morons and go to any other reputed installers to set it right.

Originally Posted by torquecurve

100/130 should be way more than adequate (rally lighting!). Did you upgrade the wire harness as well? From the pics it looks like you did not (could be wrong). It is possible that you did not upgrade to the correct guage. Also, resistance of the circuit increases with a higher watt bulb.

Please read some articles here

Daniel Stern Lighting Consultancy and Supply

It is very informative and will answer your queries.

You are lucky that your car did not catch fire due to a short circuit. I suggest you go for HID/ Xenons instead. Safer if you want a lot of light or just add a couple of Hella FF55.

Sir, its a very very useful link which can give good insights and awareness in auto lighting. But it seems you haven't gone through it fully before suggesting him the HID on stock reflectors. There's a separate writeup on HID Conversion Kits and why its illegal on standard reflectors and should not be reccomended. Kindly please read that before advising.

Here's it for your convenience:
Daniel Stern Lighting Consultancy and Supply

Originally Posted by Dinesh_Malhotra

so generally this 'no adequate light' from headlight is synonymous with FORD in India i believe.

my Ford Figo also suffers from the same issue and it becomes really tensed while going on night drives especially on places filled with ghats and high terrain.

guys do let me know if any options that i could try. i don't mind picking up a hole in my pockets for HID too, but need to whom should i come in contact within Navi Mumbai or Mumbai to get the work done

regards

Sir, hope the above one will give you some good thoughts before going for HID on stock reflectors.

We we've got many options for better lighting which includes upgrading to higher watts bulbs, retrofitting projectors which can be a legal HID assy or even consider like torquecurve suggested, auxiliary driving lamps from reputed after market accessory manufacturers like Hella.

Its just a myth that HID on standard reflectors will give you more visibility, but in reality you are going to blind others as well as loosing your distant viability than the stock bulbs as the reflectors are not designed to take up the intensity of a HID tube and there by its blinding others with the scattering glares every where.

[bullboy]

Its is almost next to impossible to drive around at night with stock headlamps on kerala roads except cities. Even coming back from work at night was worse.
Basically I wanted to go for 90/100 with relay, But somehow my installer convinced me that the reflector can take 130.The relay holder is of ceramic type and the total setup cost me around 2k including bulbs (philips Rally 200 each).