Datsun Roadster Forum-311s.org

To you electronic wizards: Will these lights plug into my '69 srl without modifications? http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayI ... otohosting

THanks in advance!

Yes, they should. I'm running these on my roadster (originally purchased by a friend for his Dodge Dart that he ended up selling). The H4 bulbs are amazing compared to the stock roadster ones. You'll wonder how you ever got by without them!

Dave, Do the stock lights use the 3 prong plug?

Here's a couple of pictures from when I removed my headlights. It is a three-prong plug set-up. My car is a 68 BTW.





If these ebay lights will plug and play I may go for a pair as well. They are selling twelve pairs, so don't worry--I wouldn't be bidding up the price on you.

Yup. The ones I got plugged right in. No messing around with wiring needed! It was the most rewarding 15 minutes of work on that car yet.

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hey howard let me know when you get em , i would like to check em out and see what im missing....was contemplating this upgrade for my dats as well....oh yeah was good meetin up with you! We should get a larger number of guys out next time!!!

Of course I'll promote installing a modern relay and upgraded wiring in addition to the bulbs. I drive in a rural, deer infested area and going from 35W to 55W makes an enormous difference!

I think I still owe Steve a write up on how to install a modern relay...

I had nothing to do last night, so I went to Kragen's and bought Sylvania Silver Star 55/65 watt lamps. They were $24.00 each. About twice the cost of the ebay lights. But ya know, for the xtra dough, it gave me a reason to work on the roadster. Anyhow, the difference from the stock lights is pretty signifigant. The Sylvania's white light compared to the stock's yellow light is like night and day. I can certainly recommend a headlight upgrade, regardless of the brand.

Watch your fusebox. If you get hi wattage bulbs the box can get hot and melt and more so if the fuse clips are tarnished or corroded. I had an alternator go out and ran off the battery which caused the bulbs to dim and draw even more current. Overall it is a great mod!

Thanks for the advice. I have a new fuse box. For a test, I put on the hi beams and my driving lights together. No fuses blew. I guess everything's OK.

IPD has a wiring harness for upgrading vintage Volvos.

http://ipdusa.com/ProductsCat.aspx?Cate ... RootID=629

I'd like to make up something like this for my car.

Painless also has a plug in wiring harness with relays to update older cars. I'm pretty sure Eastwood sells it or you can buy direct. Someone on Classiczcars.com also made up a relayed harness to update older Z's without cutting into the factory wiring. His setup should also work on a roadster. Here's a link to the thread, you can read up on it:

http://classiczcars.com/forums/showthre ... ight+relay

Scott

I bought the painless wiring relay kit and had a couple of problems...

First is the connectors won't fit through the headlight buckets on my '68, so you either have to cut up the harness (which kinda defeats the purpose) or dismantle the connectors (which can be done if you are careful), or cut bigger holes in the headlight bucket.

I opted for the middle solution.

But, once there, the connector to the back of the headlight is about 1/2" larger than the stock Datsun connector, and runs into the back of the headlight bucket. If you look at the photos above, you can see that the wires come down out of a very shallow connector on the stock Datsun part. The painless connector is deeper and the wires come out of the back.

Anyway... I ended up putting my stock headlights back in with the stock connectors, until I have the time to cannibalize the painless kit's relays and wire it to stock headlight connectors.

I hope that all made sense...

Anyway, you're probably better off with a trip to the auto store and buying a couple of driving light relays...

I took Zippy up to Marysville today to visit Dave Irwin (the guy from ClassicZ board mentioned above) to have a headlight wiring harness upgrade.

Took quite a while, as he had to figure it out as he went along, but he does great work and I now have nice, bright headlights! One of them blew when we first switched them on - not used to getting that much juice! Dave gave me an old set of Sylvanias to get home with.

Mine is sort of a prototype, still a few things to work out (I had the relays mounted on the horn mount since I have aftermarket Hella horns and the other bolt was not being used.)

The roadster has the same connectors as the early 240, and Dave's upgrade plugs right into the stock connectors and is completely reversable - no cutting of the original harness.

Next come some H4 headlights!