Modern Headlights

Pawned said
I am looking at these to replace the junk I have http://tinyurl.com/qfkmkek
Opinions/feedback?

Headlite-shaped toys from India. Junk, do not buy. If you need headlamps that are both decent and cheap, don't get cheap replaceable-bulb units, get these GEs. If there's more money than that in the budget, the Hella units linked by sireland67 are a very decent entry point, and you can go upward from there in both price and performance. Bulb selection matters a lot; if I were buying those Hellas (or any other H4 headlamp, for that matter) I would ignore the standard bulbs they came with and put in these; see really good (tech-y) bulb test results posted over here and note the giant difference between standard H4 and the Philips Xtreme.

I went out and bought the relays needed to build the headlamp relay system.
Before I did any rewiring, I checked the difference between a direct connect and switch connect for brightness. The difference is very slight.

But did you also run a direct ground? Body grounds were marginal when new, and they don't improve with age. Also, lousy headlamps remain lousy even when properly fed and grounded.

I have #16 awg wiring in there. I could up it to #14 or #12 awg wire, but I think that may be a waste of time and wire. What do you think?

Minimum 14ga for feed and ground if you want to feed halogen headlamps efficiently. 10ga is too much (hard to make a physically reliable connection with the particular connectors involved). Do make sure to run your 12ga or 14ga wire all the way to the headlamps, which will require new sockets and terminals capable of handling the large-gauge wire, not the chintzy factory or parts store items that have 18ga.

I measured a voltage drop of 1.005 VDC with my existing wiring

Did you measure drop on both legs (feed, ground)?

This may account for the very slight difference in brightness that I noticed.

Filament bulb output is not linear with voltage change, it's exponential to the power 3.4. Small voltage drop = large light loss. A bulb with rated output of 700 lumens at 12.8 volts produces only 530 lumens at 11.8 volts (25% light loss).

Slantsixdan, your info it great.

Y'welcome; I try my bestshades and all! :glasses7: