What did you do with your Thunderbird Today?

[1997ThunderbirdLXV6]

Are you sure they're aimed properly?

I drive a lot at night on completely dark country roads. Light output with the Silverstar or Silverstar Ultra bulbs is perfectly acceptable.

The only complaint I have is that, with low beams properly aimed, high beams are a bit too high. That's impossible to fix due to the housing design.

 

[theterminator93]

I think so. I don't like LED "bulbs" in halogen housings because at best, it increases glare at a rate proportional to the increased light output and at worst, puts more light out in glare and less on the road.

Factory halogen on the left, projector HID (at the time it was 6000k, I went to 4300k not long after and it was both brighter and a more visible spectrum) on the right.


Remember my picture when I added in fog lights? All 4 turned on:



Here's the same view with the HIDs. Same exposure according to EXIF data.

 

[CDsDontBurn]

Are you sure they're aimed properly?

That's what I'm saying. I broke the retaining ring for the light bulbs, and I believe that they're not longer properly aligned in the housing and therefore has degraded my light output.

I drive a lot at night on completely dark country roads. Light output with the Silverstar or Silverstar Ultra bulbs is perfectly acceptable.

I knew that light output was already bad from driving at night previously, but a couple weeks ago I was coming back home from my friend's house and I was the ONLY car in the twisty canyon road and I couldn't see jack shit with the halogens. Which prompted me to get better lights hoping that the LEDs would be better.

 

[CDsDontBurn]

I think so. I don't like LED "bulbs" in halogen housings because at best, it increases glare at a rate proportional to the increased light output and at worst, puts more light out in glare and less on the road.

Factory halogen on the left, projector HID (at the time it was 6000k, I went to 4300k not long after and it was both brighter and a more visible spectrum) on the right.
View attachment 15086

Remember my picture when I added in fog lights? All 4 turned on:
View attachment 15088


Here's the same view with the HIDs. Same exposure.
View attachment 15087

These are the kind of results I'm looking for!

What, besides putting in the HIDs, did you do?

 

[theterminator93]

Projectors.




If you want a (perhaps better) representation of real world performance, I happened to record a little driving at night in town a couple years ago. I just uploaded it.

 

[XR7-4.6]

The projectors are key to Brandon’s setup, any other approach with simply using brighter light sources in the stock housings will scatter excess light rather than focus it where it actually benefits you

That's what I'm saying. I broke the retaining ring for the light bulbs, and I believe that they're not longer properly aligned in the housing and therefore has degraded my light output.

What he’s referring to is the aim of the housings themselves, the bulb in housing aim is crucially important but really the ring is really more important for retention, the O ring on the bulb will hold it in place to the housing all by itself.

 

[XR7-4.6]

I took my Bird for a little cruise and Cars and Coffee. Nice day in Tennessee.

Looks great Bruce, I’m glad you found us! I still have the MM&FF magazine your car was featured in

 

[1997ThunderbirdLXV6]

What he’s referring to is the aim of the housings themselves,

Correct.

And when I said perfectly acceptable light output, I meant within the context of what can be expected from a static halogen reflector. I personally added my "supplemental high beams" as previously discussed here. I drive at night with relative confidence.

But if you've ever driven a modern car with curve adaptive lights through a canyon, any static setup is lousy.

 

[Irv]

Drop-in LED bulbs are a crapshoot these days, which is an improvement over them being complete garbage like 10 years ago, but still no guarantee of improved light output for the driver.

A lot of LED bulbs these days claim to perfectly replicate the beam pattern of halogens, but there's a lot of precision measuring and testing required for that to be true, and a pair of LED bulbs selling for $50 is a clear "you get what you pay for" scenario. If the bulbs can't be indexed, they're not even worth considering. Then there's how forward/backward the LED chips are on the PCB, which can't be adjusted.

I'd take it a step further and say if I were in the drop-in LED market, anything with a cat-on-keyboard brand name or claiming five-digit lumen counts on American Temu (Amazon) is a complete non-starter.

Thankfully, I don't have to worry about any of that, but if you've seen my shared album in the Facebook group or simply noticed my avatar here, you'd already know I wasn't messing around. HID projector retrofit or GTFO.

 

[CDsDontBurn]

I have a spare set of headlight housings that is had intended for Dirty Bird which I'm willing to experiment with before going over to my clean Gold Bird housings.

That said, would these (or similar) projectors work for retrofitting?

Amazon.com: Nilight - 10041P 2.5" Mini Projector Lens for H1 Bulb Headlights Retrofit, Custom Headlamps Conversion:Chrome Shround,2 Years Warranty : Automotive

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a.co

 

[theterminator93]

Possibly; at that price I wouldn't have any qualms if they ended up not working out for some reason. On the plus side, the plastic shroud that goes over the lens housing looks like it could be trimmed to make clearance if it ends up being slightly too big. I like the fact that it uses a standard bulb. The projectors I got use some weird proprietary base lamp; fortunately I have a spare set of bulbs and the OG pair that came with them is still working fine after 15 years.

I'd pop open the spare housings you have first. Sometimes the hardest part of getting the projectors in is getting the housings apart.