Can we revisit the "Dim Headlights" topic?

[mraitch]

+ 1 on Victoria British, in no way to minimize Curtis' offerings. Also suggest Vintageconnectiions for OEM connections while you are messing with the lights, or anything else for that matter. And don't bother with their extraction 'tool' Small, shaped screwdriver - hardier and just as effecive. Turned my H4s into the lights they should be. Obvously NOT LED, but powerful enough, IMHO.

[Curtis]

If you want brighter headlights right away I would go with the Victoria British harness. I could duplicate it but why would I? It's inexpensive and effective. You can even take off the tubing and tape it if you want a more original look.

The 69-70 fuse box is well known to have problems and the VB harness bypasses that. Plus if you look at the wires coming off the headlights themselves they are mighty puny. I bought some new ceramic plugs I haven't got around to making up yet with heavier wire. Also if you look at the wires in the relay they are pretty small too. None of this seems to scream good current flow. I've become a fan of overbuilding stuff.

However if you go to the wire gauge calculator you'll see that very short lengths of small gauge wire can carry 30 or 40 amps of current.

I'm off to Europe today for 2 weeks. Train trip across Switzerland, a stop in Paris for The Louvre and back to the Netherlands where I'll drop in and see Richard and Erica and his roadsters.

[dbrick]

Also not downing Curtis, but envious of his upcoming trip. The odd thing about the later cars is they have a fuse for each headlight for power, and switches the ground for high and low. The VB harness will work fine, as its an isolated ground relay, and the power circuit back to the headlights will be normal negative ground/switched positive. If you want to keep it neat, you can get connectors from Vintageconnections and tap the factory circuit at one of the small 3 pin connector near the radiator that the harness to each headlight bucket plugs into, leave the other open and remove the short harness from the plug to the headlight on each side, so less wires going to and from the headlight bucket. It will make sense when you look at it.

[Curtis]

I've been waiting years to take this trip.

[Curtis]

There are about 3 or 4 solutions to fix the wiring on these things depending on what you want and what the problem is.

The original wires for the right and left headlights is about 15 gauge. When I build a new harness I put in 14 gauge and can put in 12 gauge. One problem is the connectors are the mini connectors and they don't like 12 gauge.

And the first weak spot is the fuse box and it's condition.