Chuck Renner SEZ -
> David, I think you may be a touch confused. Sealed-beam simply means
> that the bulb and lens/reflector are replaced as a single unit. The
> halogen version has a halogen bulb inside. These are still readily
> available as replacement items for cars orginally fitted with them.
I remember that when European companies started exporting H4 lights
to the US, sometime in the very late 70s, one of the major lighiting
companies (GE? Sylvania?) had just built a huge sealed beam headlight
factory, and lobbied the NHTSA successfully to ban H4 lights because of
the "possibility of reflector corrosion". In Washington, where I live,
the H4 lights were legal under state law and the federal law was
never enforced. I bought Hella halogen lights at a local auto parts
store for my MGB in about 1978.
Soon the public at large started agitating for halogen lights, and
a compromise was reached that let manufacturers insert halogen bulbs
in their sealed beam units and sell those under federal law. They
were never popular here in WA because of the availability of H4 lamps.
All the sealed beam halogen lamps I ever saw looked just like sealed beam
tungsten lamps, and the beam pattern was atrocious. The only difference
between them and tungsten sealed beam lamps was that the halogen
units were brighter and whiter. But of the ones I saw, the "disposable"
lens was just as crude on both types.
> The lens pattern is more a result of federal regs than anything else, so
> while a US-spec Cibie or Wipac will be an improvement over the standard
> lamp, if you want a good pattern and cutoff, you need to get E-code
> lights. They are, of course, technically not legal for road use in the
> US, but given the fact that they won't dazzle other drivers, and there's
> such a wide variety of headlights out there these days, it's unlikely to
> cause any problems.
I've never heard of E-code lights. What's the difference between
them and H4?
--
David Breneman
Distributed Systems Software Analyst
DHL/Airborne Express
3101 Western Avenue
Seattle, WA 98121
Phone: +1-206-830-4253
Fax: +1-206-830-4432
david.breneman@dhl.com
(This .sig is greater than 4 lines as mandated by company policy.)
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