100W high beams in '98 V70

A while back I had a '93 850 T5 estate - lovely car. Now replaced with a

I had a load of problems with the headlights - the beam alignment was poor, they failed fairly quickly, and I had TERRIBLE trouble getting the retaining clips back on after I replaced the bulbs.

One day, I took the headlight out to see what was wrong.

The alloy bulb holder had very clearly become warped - the new bulbs wouldn't sit down flat, and the clips would not clip. I bought 2 new ones from the main dealer (luckily they didn't make me buy whole headlight assemblies) and everything worked again.

I ASSUME a previous owner had used 100w bulbs.

So beware - it may not be the wiring or fuses that give you the problems!

Bob

That was my concern - that the sockets or mounting would suffer. 10 AWG wire should handle the current okay and it is pretty standard for headlight wiring, but the socket contacts and any plastic near the lamps are usually underengineered.

High currents are the most common reason for connector contacts to fail. They start with a chicken/egg situation - it's hard to say whether heat comes first or the contact tension is too low. Anyway, one leads to the other, and so on until the contacts get hot enough to oxidize. The whole thing heads south in a hurry from there.

Mike

I would consider heavy duty harnesses, somehere on the net someone offered them, maybe IPD.