Bucking the LED headlight fad. A quartz upgrade tutorial.

[Barry Wolk]

Not unlike adding disc brakes to a Mark II, is LED really an upgrade? LED is an advantage when you're lighting your home or business because it saves money in energy costs over incandescent. Since electricity costs for a car are zero the payback potential is zero. The light source is just different, not better. Anyone in the lighting business will tell you it's the optics the light goes through, not the lamp type that makes for a cohesive and controlled beam of light.

Sealed-beam headlights were standard equipment because that were cheap to make. European manufacturers used separate lamps that could go into the optics of your choice. That allows you to use brighter light sources in a optically-pure, scientifically-designed, fresnelled optics that didn't merely throw the light out there, they put the light where it's really needed. I'm basing my writing on experience. In 2013 I was invited to Pebble Beach. Just before I left I installed the latest and greatest LED headlamps and aimed them. In regular use they were OK, but failed miserably in the ever-present morning fog. We nearly ran off the road several times and missed many turns. I don't think I've ever seen my wife more stressed. I threw them away so no one would ever use them. As I've discovered in 40 years in the lighting business LED doesn't have the cohesive "punch" that quartz lighting does.

I'll start with a little tutorial on how headlights work. On a '30s car the high beam and low beam filaments are the same size, wattage and shape. They are mounted back to back, but are never on at the same time as that would overload the wiring and burn up the headlight switch. In the beginning the normal wattage was 25-watts per filament. Imagine the reflector of a typical flashlight with an adjustable beam. As the light source is drawn into the reflective cone the beam gets smaller and brighter. Once a lamp position produces a cohesive beam the position of the filaments comes into play. Installed horizontally the light produced by the upper filament bounces its light off the top of the reflector, bouncing the light down as the "low" beam. Switching light sources throws the light down and the bounces up into oncoming driver's eyes.

The original 25/25-watt lamps were fine when cars averaged 25 mph and the National Speed Limit was 45. It was difficult to outdrive your headlamps, not necessarily because of light level, but the conditions of prior wagon-rutted roads kept the speed low. As roads improved and speed increased people found ways to increase their lamp wattage to 25/35 watt up to 50/50-watt. The only way you could prevent your wiring from burning up was to install relays with contacts designed to take the current flow around the headlight switch rather than through it. My 1933 Continental Flyer came with 25/25 lamps. A previous owner installed relays powered directly from the battery with 12 gauge wiring, one gauge larger than the stock 14 gauge. 14 gauge is rated for 15 amps and 12 gauge is rated for 20-amps, just like your house.

New wiring is installed to carry power to the new light sources through new relays that control the left and right filaments together by simply plugging the original headlight socket into the relays to control when the new high and low beams come on. You would change by simply using the stock foot switch. I've endeavored to make the new wiring the same color code and type of the original insulation. The relays would be hidden in the fuse box with independent fusing.

There is a lighting expert I've gone to, as my technical expertise in the doing, not the sourcing. I used his experience with international automotive headlamp manufacturers to guide me. I probably paid a couple hundred dollars more than the parts sourced elsewhere, but got a great education from the doing. While he can supply generic harnessing, I preferred to make my own. He did supply every relay, socket, crimp connector and fuse holders, along with the optics and light sources. I supplied the proper crimper and electrical tape.

My first project was my friend Al Gorosh's pristine 1961 Lincoln Sedan. We're both at that age that normal headlamps just don't cut it. He called, desperate for better lighting that would prevent him from getting lost in his heavily treed neighborhood. The canopy is so thick in places it blocks out moonlight. If you're from the Detroit area he lives around Cranbrook Academy. I was astounded with the results in my shop and he was thrilled in a real-world test last night. The selected optics has a low-beam right-biased wing of light that rises up and off to the right side to avoid blinding oncoming traffic while still able to clearly see side street and traffic control signs.

Here's Al's video of a drive in his 'hood.

Shall I continue?

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[Jack Bowser]

One place in our Mark II's where a LED light is a good idea is the headliner light.
I actually burned my finger bad enough to get a blister touching mine.
I now have a LED replacement there as well as may courtesy lights.
My courtesy light lenses were turning brown from the heat from the bulbs.
Now I have brighter lights in these 3 places and no more hot bulbs not to mention much less current.

[Barry Wolk]

One place in our Mark II's where a LED light is a good idea is the headliner light.
I actually burned my finger bad enough to get a blister touching mine.
I now have a LED replacement there as well as may courtesy lights.
My courtesy light lenses were turning brown from the heat from the bulbs.
Now I have brighter lights in these 3 places and no more hot bulbs not to mention much less current.

For general illumination that are great, but for headlights, not so much.

[AndyMacMartin]

Shall I continue?

Yes, please continue if there's more!