Range Rover Classic Headlights

I just replaced my sealed beam units with H4 halogen replaceable globes and lenses, heaps better, plugs straight in to standard loom. Richard

OK, you may be interested in my site - I just added a bit about relaying RR headlamps switches as they have a tendancy to melt.

Yes, Early RR's used sealed beam units, rated at I think 55/40W. Later models used 'halogen' bulbs in unsealed lense/reflector units, with I think 60/55w bulbs (This increase is enough to stress early switches, hence the need to relay)

Would reccomend the later Hally kits. Cost about £25 form most of the specialist, and they mount in exactly the same way, and are directly interchageable.

What I would say though is check which mounts you have, and thier condition.

Early models had steel 'bowls' and they have a habbit of rotting. Later ones have plastic bowls which are a lot better - BUT I believe that the bowls are a special moulding for the RR and designed to go with the later horezontal slat grill.

If you want to go to plastic bowls, on an eraly RR I'm not sure if you can use the plastic bowls for an MGB/Mini/BL Whatever in place of the steel ones - down to checking the parts book I think.

Any way - usual problem is that when you come to remove the lamps, the retaining rings crumble, and leave you with three screws solidly attached in the bowl, and attempts to remove them result in breaking the bowl.

So, while its only £25 or so for the lenses and bulbs, it can be another £100 odd to replace all the fittings to mount them up!

Best of luck with it!

Halogens every time - fantastic improvement, 10 minute job (depending on state of fittings), no wiring changes necessary.

Rich

Awesome job on this page, I think I will be revisiting my current 'plug and play' set up!

On or around Thu, 19 Aug 2004 10:16:26 +0100, rads enlightened us thusly:

Wipac "quad optic" kit used to be good, I think they still are available. they fit the lucas sealed-beam style lamp housings as a direct replacement.

Personally, I'd got for the Phillips "vision plus" or other equivalent

60/55W halogen bulbs, these are good too. resist the temptation to put 100/80W in unless you also upgrade the switch and wiring, or fit relays. 100/80 bulbs (which are incidentally illegal for highway use in the UK) take more current and should have fat wires - you can wire 'em through a relay, of course, and trigger the relay off the normal headlamp wiring, but honestly, the 60/55 vision plus (Osram is "silver star" or somesuch) which are advertised as "50% brighter" are pretty damn' good. If you want more main beam light, fit a pair of spots - these days, one of the biggest irritations on the road at night is all the super-extra-bright dipped beams

- some of these cause quite bad dazzle even though they're properly aimed - and although you can see better in the it that's illuminated, the extra dazzle factor means that your eyes are less sensitive to dimly illuminated things out of the light patch, which doesn't exactly add to road safety overall.

that's my pet whinge of the month over...

A very good thing to do :)

Here in the states Rovers North sells a headlamp conversion. Hella's Vision Plus. And with that "European Headlamp Technology" I'm sure you will be able to find something, these are a drop in replacement. Brighter beams are available...but you will have to upgrade wiring and add relays. Here's an excerpt from their site

Range Rover Classic Hella Vision Plus Headlamp Conversion. High performance European headlamp technology in a "street legal D.O.T." version. Most powerful, legally-approved headlamp on the market. These headlamps provide a precise, focused beam pattern that turns night into day! A direct replacement for factory headlamps on all Range Rover Classic, Defender, Series models. 60 watt high beam / 55 watt low beam. 7" dia.

I replaced the headlamps on my 88 RRC with Wipac Quadoptics. They are non-sealed and take halogen bulbs. Drop straight into the existing mounting ring and plug straight into the existing loom. I think that Paddock sell them as a kit including bulbs.

Now, bear in mind that they are actually two types of Quadoptic - one has a shield in front of the bulb (the Quadoptic kit IIRC) whereas the other doesn't. I got the ones without the shield by buying them from a carparts place because I reckon that as the halogen bulbs have a black sheild tip I don't need anything else reducing the light output.

Both types IIRC have plastic backs and UV proof plastic lenses.

I haven't seen sealed beam units for years.

BTW Vehicle Wiring Products sell a bolt-on Quadoptic, i.e. like a bolt-on spot light but a dip/main beam unit. I've been toying with the idea of adding a pair of these to 'enhance' the dip beam lighting on my RRC. (However a broken spring has pushed that idea further to the back of the queue)

HTH

Richard

I went to the wreckers and bought a set of 7" halogen headlights - no idea what they were from but they worked perfectly in the RR

Reason? My 1986 RHD Rangie was delivered to Australia (RHD country) with LHD headlights. I noticed that the headlights were pretty poor - then I noticed the beam pattern was wrong. When I checked I found out why. I asked the origianl owner from whom I bought the RR anf he siad the lights were original.

So for over 10 years it ran with LHD headlights.

Oh, I later changed to a horizontal grille so I fitted headlight buckets from an old Hillman Minx instead of the bloody awful original mounting system.

Ron

LHD head lamps vs. RHD Head lamps?

Never heard of such a thing. Sounds like asking the new guy on the job to go fetch a pail of steam.

RHD headlights dip to the left, and LHD headlights dip to the right.

On or around Tue, 07 Sep 2004 08:54:52 +1200, EMB enlightened us thusly:

and centre dip headlamps dip to the centre, of course :-)

but he's right. The dip beam pattern is asymmetric, making a longer beam to one side, in order mainly to illuminate the edge of the road to a further distance, the better to see pedestrians and suchlike.

Also the whole pattern shifts a bit left (for RHD ones) so that it points away from oncoming traffic.

the older style headlamps didn't produce the sharp cut-off that the modern ones have but still used to dip left or right, quite often. Mostly, if you look at the headlamp glass, you'll see an arrow on it which tells you which way it dips, and that arrow points tot he edge of the road on the side you're driving.

If yoiu look at the headlights you'll see a pattern in the glas that gives a sort of Y-shape (lying on it's side) beam. On RHD headlights the Y-shape is the right so that the projected beam pattern is to the left to illuminate the LHS side of the road (it's the mirror image) of the glass pattern..

On a LHD headlight, the Y-shap is to the left to project the peam to the left.

Ron

"Jack Kerouac"

Now having said that Austin...couldn't one just rotate the lens 180 degrees?

In news:i6j%c.14337$Cr5.6302@trndny08, Jack Kerouac blithered:

So it dips upwards?