Bill:
First off, what year and type of car do you have?
Second, how serious are you about lighting?
Third, what HID headlights do you have?? I didn't know that they were
available for 7" sports car applications, but I havn't been keeping on top
of the new types of lights.
For some obscure reason I am a lamp nutter. It may be something to do with
loving pro-rally, or maybe just night blindness. I like driving lamps that
will burn the fur off a cat a 200 hundred paces.
So if this isn't an area of interest, please delete now.
Normally I suggest using the best 7" halogen H4 headlights you can find. I
stick with the standard 55/60 bulb, as the 100 watt ones don't last very
long in comparison.
It takes some serious driving lights to improve over a good pair of
headlights. The three areas you can get improvement on are:
Range: Requires a pencil beam lamp which will only illuminate one lane
Cornering: Requires a wide beam lamp pointed outwards
Fog/Snow: Requires a short cut off beam, mounted low that cuts under the
fog and does not reflect as much as the headlamps.
I am admittedly old school and don't have any useful experience with the
modern batch of projector lamps, but am willing to learn if someone wants to
chime in.
This is my experience.
For high speed cornering, driving lamps aimed wide will work better than fog
lights as the fog lights have too short of a cutoff.
Fog lights are useful for fog (duh) if mounted low, and for low speed
cornering if mounted higher. Most driving lamps on the market look nice,
but don't do much for you.
The hardest part about mounting lamps is to ensure that they are stable.
The large serious lamps all required an upper stabilizing strut. Smaller
lamps can be bumper mounted, the easiest way is to drill the bumper, also
the tackiest. The best way to mount a lamp on a British sports car is with
a fabricated bracket that attaches solidly to the bumper horn. Check out
the factory brackets for the MGA for an example.
Knowing more about what type of car you have, and lamp type would help with
mounting specifics.
back to the serious question. Back when I was rallying, the only useful
lamps available were at least 7" in diameter. Watching modern rallyists
they are still using big lamps, so I'm guessing that even with the
popularity of projector technology, the bigger the reflector, the better.
I used to run a pair of 7" SEV Marchal 700 series lamps on my '70 MGB, set
into the recessed grille mounted on steel brackets which filled the center
of a split front bumper. The front bumper matched the split rear bumper.
Ok, so I was a kid then, it seemed cool to me.
The smallest driving lamp I now run is a Cibie 450 rectangular unit which is
about 9" X 6". It has enough range to improve on the modern headlamps in
my Pickemup truck. I'm looking forward to getting a B back on the road so I
can do something silly with my accumulation of Cibie and Marchal rally
lamps.
Right now I'm converting my newly found Rover SD1 back to it's rightful
Euro-spec headlamp units. Comparing the technology of the original 1976
design H4 high/low, with seperate H2 pencil beam to the pathetic 1960s dual
5 1/4" federal spec sealed beams is a very bad joke. Sometimes I wonder
about our great country.
The SD1 also comes with factory front and rear fog lamp locations that were
also not fitted with lamps so the cars would be safer for the federal
market.
I'm interested in hearing from folks regarding more modern lighting, the
good, the bad, the ugly.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bill Meyer [mailto:wcameyer@msn.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 14, 2002 5:00 PM
> To: The MG List
> Subject: Supplementary Lighting.
>
>
> I have two questions:
>
> 1. I use extra lights to supplement the HID headlights I use.
> Right now, I
> use halogen driving lights aimed a bit wide to light up the
> side of the road
> to detect pedestrians, animals, etc. and to see around
> curves. Fog lights do
> not reach as far, but do spread wider. Would these be a better bet?
>
> 2. Presently, I have driving lights mounted on a badge bar.
> On my other B, I
> wish to mount just the lights, without a bar. Are there
> bumper clips for
> this, do I have to drill the bumper, or what??????
>
> Bill
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