mopowers
Well-Known Member
Are there any sealed beam headlights on the market that are worth a ****? I know the GE nighthawks were decent until they outsourced to China, but are there any others currently in production worth buying?
Are there any sealed beam headlights on the market that are worth a ****?
Pretty much this. Unless it's a resto, it's this.Do they HAVE to be sealed beams? The H4 conversions look very close, but blow most any sealed beams outta the water as long as you get a good headlamp and use a headlight relay harness kit like @crackedback sells.
Great info. Thank you for taking the time. I appreciate it.No.
Wagner never made a sealed beam headlamp with any virtue other than cheap. That has pretty much always been Wagner Lighting's primary specialty—vehicle lighting that (more or less) meets the legal
requirements at lowest cost.
For quite some years, the Philips and GE halogen sealed beams were the best ones available on the US market, and for awhile the GE NightHawks were the only worthy sealed beams available without spending extreme money pouncing on old stocks of little-known options not generally available. GE actually put some engineering skill and talent (and oh yeah: money!) into those NH sealed beams. Not the world's best headlamps—they were still sealed beams, and still had to sell at sealed-beam prices, so there wasn't a whole lot of money in the budget to make them—but a very credible effort. Good quality high-luminance C8/C8 burners well focused in the reflector, good
quality reflectors with minimal heel distortion, and a thoughtful lens prescription (yes, it's called a prescription, just like with eyeglasses) giving a good mix of beam spread and well-placed peak intensity.
GE held out for a few years after Wagner decided to go to China rather than renewing their thoroughly decrepit equipment and Corning shut down their production of sealed beam reflectors and lenses (which sent Sylvania to China for theirs, too). But eventually GE shut down their last sealed beam production line, too, and went to (class? Anyone?)
China. You can still buy a GE Night Hawk sealed beam, only now it is severely nasty garbage which very likely does not meet the minimum photometric requirements, or might just barely meet them, and certainly does not offer any performance benefit over any headlamp that can be brought to mind, including a non-NH GE sealed beam (same dreck). They're much worse than the pre-halogen sealed beams our cars came with.
Sealed beams are dead-dead-dead. There's NOS still floating around on Ebay; if you want to stick with sealed beams, go get a couple NOS Philips H6017 or GE H6024 . Older packaging = better. Like these or these or these or these or these or these (H5024 = long life H6024).
You have to sift through a ton of junk to get to the good stuff on the replacement-for-sealed-beam market, as described here and here.
Yeah, lets install ridiculously bright headlamps so we can blind everyone coming towards us (even on low beam)
and get our cars wrecked when the oncoming traffic can't see anything... This trend has gotten way out of hand.
I just saw something yesterday about Ford trucks having headlights that don't meet standards https://fordauthority.com/2024/03/2017-2019-ford-super-duty-recalled-over-bright-headlights/Yeah, lets install ridiculously bright headlamps so we can blind everyone coming towards us (even on low beam) and get our cars wrecked when the oncoming traffic can't see anything... This trend has gotten way out of hand.
It's not and neither were many of the other replies.And I still don't see how that's relevant to this thread.
Now, you're just speaking out of ignorance. The Cibie E codes I spoke of actually have a very sharp cutoff of light in front of the vehicle on low beam. They don't scatter light at all, but they have very focused to a very specific pattern and location. Most problems stem from people being ignorant thinking those LEDs they just bought are the latest and greatest, when in fact, unless they spent about $250 EACH, they're probably junk and they still could be. Then, we have those who have no CLUE ON EARTH about how to properly aim headlights. There are plenty of good upgrades on the market that work and work well, but any of them can be crap if they aren't properly aimed.Yeah, lets install ridiculously bright headlamps so we can blind everyone coming towards us (even on low beam) and get our cars wrecked when the oncoming traffic can't see anything... This trend has gotten way out of hand.
You'll get no argument from me.It seems that the worst are on new vehicles...