Wilbur
Senior Member
I had done a post last week seeking advice as to how to make my lights better. I was considering going to an alternator and halogen bulbs with new reflectors. That approach was shot down by most and improving the existing reflectors became the hot way to go.
This is a 29 Fordor that l have owned for 3 months now, and one of the first things that l did to this car was to rewire the headlight wiring within the buckets. Everything in there was frayed, cracked and wrapped with crispy old tape. I bought new sockets, soldered bullet ends on, ran dedicated grounds, and basically made everything in there bullet proof.
Still, my lights seemed very dull. Well, after polishing up the reflectors and reading loads of past posts regarding lights, I still felt that something was amiss with my system. The lights were pulling 18 amps.
One post had mentioned using a welding helmet to look at bulbs, on, to see the filaments. I did this and found that both filaments of both bulbs were on in both light switch positions! After some quick testing, I found that one of my "new" sockets was made wrong in that the high and low terminal grommets were crimped onto each other, powering both filaments in that socket and back-feeding the same condition to the other socket !! My lights were dim because it was just far too much amperage demand for the system to handle. We took a 150 ride today and drove an hour in the dark. The lights are wonderful!
This is a 29 Fordor that l have owned for 3 months now, and one of the first things that l did to this car was to rewire the headlight wiring within the buckets. Everything in there was frayed, cracked and wrapped with crispy old tape. I bought new sockets, soldered bullet ends on, ran dedicated grounds, and basically made everything in there bullet proof.
Still, my lights seemed very dull. Well, after polishing up the reflectors and reading loads of past posts regarding lights, I still felt that something was amiss with my system. The lights were pulling 18 amps.
One post had mentioned using a welding helmet to look at bulbs, on, to see the filaments. I did this and found that both filaments of both bulbs were on in both light switch positions! After some quick testing, I found that one of my "new" sockets was made wrong in that the high and low terminal grommets were crimped onto each other, powering both filaments in that socket and back-feeding the same condition to the other socket !! My lights were dim because it was just far too much amperage demand for the system to handle. We took a 150 ride today and drove an hour in the dark. The lights are wonderful!
Could you post a pic of you staring into your headlight with the welding hood on? Captions will abound!!
Bill W.
