headlight upgrade

davebomber

Hey guys. I have a Nissan primastar and I find the standard dipped lights in it pretty poor. If another vehicle coming towards me I can't see the road in front of me at all....it gives me no distance at all. Anything any of you can recommend???

bazz26

Silly question but have you had the headlight focus checked?

As above have the alignment checked first.

Then get Osram night breakers, they are really good and far better than the bog standard 7 Euro bulbs. You'll find them on Micks Garage.

Because they are far brighter you'd want to have your alignment checked even more or you could find yourself getting flashed a lot.

davebomber

bazz26 wrote: »

Silly question but have you had the headlight focus checked?

Only passed doe lately and was serviced last week so should be in focus.....

CiniO

Leeway on NCT and DOE for lights setup is horrendously huge.
In other words, it would need to be really way out to fail.
But to see right, you'd best have it adjusted to manufacturer spec.

I.e. NCT allows lights height to be between 0.5% and 2%. So for lights located at 60cm above the ground, this means that dipped lights could lit the road in front for as little 30 metres, or as much as 120 metres and still pass. To see right, you'd want to to be at around 60 - 70 metres I'd imagine.

Also very often problem is worn reflecting surface in your light. It's this silver colour surface which reflects light from your bulb. After many years if lights were used a lot this doesn't reflect as much light as new one, causing lights to be much weaker. Also front glass or plastic light surface might be scratched or dimmed with dirt, etc and would prevent light from working perfectly.

Ideally you'd want to have light disassembled, cleaned and regenerated to work like new again, and then you wouldn't need any special bulbs, which in most cases only cause dazzling to oncoming drivers.

Unfortunately I'm not sure if there's many light regeneration places in Ireland.

davebomber

CiniO wrote: »

Leeway on NCT and DOE for lights setup is horrendously huge.
In other words, it would need to be really way out to fail.
But to see right, you'd best have it adjusted to manufacturer spec.

I.e. NCT allows lights height to be between 0.5% and 2%. So for lights located at 60cm above the ground, this means that dipped lights could lit the road in front for as little 30 metres, or as much as 120 metres and still pass. To see right, you'd want to to be at around 60 - 70 metres I'd imagine.

Also very often problem is worn reflecting surface in your light. It's this silver colour surface which reflects light from your bulb. After many years if lights were used a lot this doesn't reflect as much light as new one, causing lights to be much weaker. Also front glass or plastic light surface might be scratched or dimmed with dirt, etc and would prevent light from working perfectly.

Ideally you'd want to have light disassembled, cleaned and regenerated to work like new again, and then you wouldn't need any special bulbs, which in most cases only cause dazzling to oncoming drivers.

Unfortunately I'm not sure if there's many light regeneration places in Ireland.

Sounds like a lot of work. I have cleaned the outside of the headlights with Maguires and they look pretty damn good...but didn't really make much odds. Will definitely get the focus checked tomorrow if I get the time