98Trans headlights Suck! Penny Pinchin' Solution..

[woscarr]

Ok compared to my Volkswagen Golf, or my old 92 Plymouth Voyager, and even my work truck 99 Windstar...

The headlights on my 98 Trans Sport (looks same as Montana series) SUCK BIG TIME !!

The lens are not hazed over, perfectly clear, no condensation on the inside, even using silver star bulbs at $20 bucks a pop! Yet they still suck !

Mula is a little tight these days to be buying new headlights assems. or fancy bulbs so I went to Princess Auto and picked up a set of those low profile 55watt fog light kit for 15 bucks.

Complete kit ! wire harness, 30amp relay, switch and fuse. Only problem is they are 'fog' lights, yellow. Not much good as driving lights.

So I took the lenses out and with some 2000grit sand paper proceeded to wet sand the color coating off the back of the lenses and polished with autosol.

Now I have super bright projector beam lights to add to the mix as desired.

Very low profile, have them in the 2nd holes from the outside under the bumper mounted to the rad support.

I CAN SEE AGAIN !

[LMP]

I did about the same with my '93 transport...moved the parking lights to the center grille and filled the original holes in the bumper - if that can still cary that name - with long range driving lights. The original transport had glass lenses until '93 when they then turned to infamous plastic lenses.

[Viala]

Hello

Have you a photo , because I can't see nothing with my head lights.
Thank's

[LMP]

OK I'll take that photo ASAP . By the way, I have arranged additional relays so when I turn to High beams, the low beams stay ON too and the bumper driving lamps turn ON too....so I have six filaments ON on High beams...that helps.....and it is very convincing for that incoming crap who would think he will keep his high beams ON.....

[woscarr]

I'll take a photo tomorrow ,too dark right now. Then i just have to figure how to upload it here.



Hey LMP. That relay to keep the two driving lights on the bumper on when on high beam sounds really cool !


Is it hard to do ? Can you show how to do it ?

Or just tell how to ?


Thanks


"and it is very convincing for that incoming crap who would think he will keep his high beams ON....."

[woscarr]

here's a pic..

[LMP]

here is another....but yeah, taking the pic at night would make it much more dramatic......

[LMP]

.....ANd the extra relays that go with that.

ONe relay keeps the low beams ON when the high are lit, the other feeds the lng range at same time.
Since boths relays are fed direct from battery with heavy gauge wire, the voltage to lows and long range is higher than when fed through the normal switch path. I have been lazy and would have normally added a third relay to feed the high beams too in the same way....may be later....
The voltage loss through normal wiring from battery to main switch or normal relays (not shown here..see www.avigex.ca/xport/drl.jpg ), to steering hi-lo switch and then back to lamps is more than one volt...so the relays really add punch to the brightness of filaments, in fact nearer to their nominal voltage.

[Viala]

hello LMP but I can't see your photo and the link is not good

Bye

Paul

[LMP]

?!?...they work fine with me..photos and link.......try again..maybe the host server was down for a little while...

[thejman3]

first thing to do is throw those silverstars in the trash, any bulb that has some kind of coating on it you need to stay away from. allthough the silverstars have only a slight coating, its still there. its not as bad as the blue ricer bulbs but its still taking away from the output. you only think you see better because of the slight color change. here is what i did and my lights are just as good as any hid projector setup for light output.

first i made a new harness than runs straight off the battery, so i would get no voltage drop. then i went to rallylights.com (really good company with the best prices) i bought some HELLA non coated bulbs in a higher wattage. my stock low beam was 55watt i placed 80watt bulbs in that slot. and the high beams were 65watt i placed 100watt bulbs in those. and those factory fog lights are worthless as well. the only upgrade bulb available is a 37watt. i think its a 897, you need at least 55watt fog lights to even show up on the road. so i went aftermarket and upgraded the 55watt bulbs to 100watt hella's.

and last i did the relay mod, so my low beams and fogs stay on with my high beams. so you can say that its a big mistake when people try to bright light me

and they are aimed right, so i get no blinding people at least on low beam lol. the output goes in all the right places and lights up everything. and makes you feel safe to drive at night at any speed.

[Meridivs]

Very interesting topic

Thanks for the pictures LMP. I thought about this setup (with headlights in bumper) since I got this van.

Here, in Europe, there's one more alternative - full Xenon installations to replace the classic setup. The advantage is that it takes less power to produce a much brighter light.

By the way, how's your power consumption with 4 high-beams instead of factory's 2 original setup?

[WelmoedJ]

Perhaps a bit late to respond to this thread, but better late than never...

I also found the standard main (low and hi) beams on my TS 3.8L 95 not producing enough light.
The Germans had a nice description on how to improve the light and after applying the changes I found a 100% improvement.

The changes mainly are about cutting the standard power wires to the head lights, replacing them with heavier gauge wiring and using the original wires as the switch wiring.
I made new 1.5 mm2 wires to relays (1 for each of the units) and used the same wire type from the relays to the lamp units.
Also improved ground connection.

In the same "run" I also connected the low beam from the inner unit and the hi beam of the outer unit, so I now have both units producing both low and hi beams.

Since the article has been in German it probably wouldn't help the majority of you English tongue drivers. However if there is interest in this solution I'm willing to give it a shot and translate.

Welmoed.