I'd like to upgrade the headlights on my '79. I currently have halogen sealed beams and they're not horrible, but they could be a lot better. Years ago I had an S-10 that I installed a set of H4 halogen headlights with 100/80 bulbs. Best headlights I've ever had! I'd like to find something like that for the 'Vette. Speed Direct has a Xenon conversion kit for $500. Seems a bit steep especially since that works out to about a million dollars Canadian. I can't seem to find an H4 kit for the 5 3/4" round headlights. What is everyone doing for C3 headlights?

 

Stock and no night driving.....

 

http://classicgarage.com/53hehekit.html
I did have to modify the hole size in the back of the high beam for the bigger housing.

 

Thanks. It looks like that is what I'm looking for. Did you rewire with a relay or plug into the stock harness? And much better than a halogen sealed beam?

 

I think an H4 usage can be far improved if you go with true high performance lenses, designed to throw the light of these high wattage bulbs. I use Marchal's on my good ride and on the other car a Cibie setup with even higher wattages and use relays! But bulbs of that wattage are highly illegal, so I load a standard bulb 55w/60w in the second location!

 

Make sure that use of ANY HIGHER Wattage than stock wattage replacement bulbs
MUST have a RELAY System Installed.
(Please do not ask me how I know this on my 1978 - same as Your 1979 model)
I will tell You that the headlight switch & related wire plug-ins will FAIL if 100w/80w H4's
are used.

 

Yeah, I've got a friend who fried his wiring with that setup. I got away with it on my S-10, but I wouldn't try it on the Vette's 37 year old wiring. Also my headlights on the S-10 used to run really hot and they were the large rectangular lights. I'd be worried about putting 100 watt bulbs in a little 5 3/4" housing.

 

Try the hella h4 housings. I'm running 4 of those, about 80 a pair. Wire in a relay for the lights to take the load off the switch. Your choice of bulb.

http://amzn.com/B001G7A9YS

I'm running an hid setup with the hella housings. Works pretty well w/out going the custom projector housing route.

 

The Speed Direct is a good one- albiet a little expensive- I made my own-

Bought really nice ceramic plugs-large gauge wire- Copper wire not "CCA" which is Copper Coated Aluminum and is equal to one gauge LESS than the Copper as far as conductivity.

They are not all created equal- one on the right has much thicker gauge metal for the terminals-

DSCN4931 by Richard Hayes, on Flickr

notice the difference in wire size- again right side better- and that's aluminum wire -cheaper!!

DSCN4927 by Richard Hayes, on Flickr

since I'm adding fans -extra horns - electric headlight motors-and wanted better power to the lights- I added a terminal w/ 4gu to the battery-

DSCN5170 by Richard Hayes, on Flickr

12 gauge wire from relays to lights -

DSCN5143 by Richard Hayes, on Flickr

lights- Hella- 80/100w and 100w


relays for lights and headlight motors-

DSCN5160 by Richard Hayes, on Flickr

Only used the factory wires to trigger the relays-
DSCN5151 by Richard Hayes, on Flickr

Then used some AN braided hose to cover the wires

DSCN5154 by Richard Hayes, on Flickr

You will have to mod the headlight assembly to get the headlights to fit-

I used a scrap piece of metal to center the holesaw-

DSCN5140 by Richard Hayes, on Flickr

DSCN5145 by Richard Hayes, on Flickr

DSCN5144 by Richard Hayes, on Flickr

 

This is a great deal...does not say if these Hella Lenses are Euro lead Chrystal lenses but you should be fine.

I have had 4 Hella Euro's on my 78 since 1983 (yes 1983!) and I run 55/60 watt lows and 100 watt highs. I have a relay on the 100 watt highs only with the 55/60 watt lows running through the stock wiring and have zero electrical issues after all these years. Personally I would not run 80/100 watt lows through the low beams since the light lumen output is primarily dictated by the lense design and the extra wattage and heat from the very high wattage bulbs will not get you much more light output. I run 100 watt highs (maybe 25% more lumen output over the 55 watt bulbs) since the highs are not used that much and will burn a hole in the retina and back of head of those who fail to yield or want to play high beam chicken coming from the opposite lane. If you want more light output on the low beam side, run a true HID setup (not HID like bulbs which are worthless) OR you can try an IRH halogen bulb (infrared Reflector Halogen) which uses the same wattage as a stock H4 (55 watts) but puts out the lumens close to an HID without the tremendous heat output.(I have a set of these IRH halogens on my high beams of my Chrysler 300 and they are impressive). IRH halogens though do retain the same color light as a traditional halogens. Hope that helps.

The 78/79 highlight switch has a built in circuit breaker that will flash the headlights if you overdraw amperage through the switch much over the stock rating of about 140-150 watts total....for 4 sealed beam/sealed halogens during operation

 

this is how I am going to wire it, 12 gauge to the lights.

if my math is right 19.2 amps high beams( 2@ 55 h1 ,plus 2@ 60 h4 = 230 watts / 12v), and low beams are (2@ 55 = 110 watts / 12v) would be 9.2 amps, so the hella setup pulls almost 20 amps peak with high beams. When it is wired I will do a voltage reading and an ampere reading to check.


all I can say is WOW, richard454's silver vette is soooo clean, anyway I bought the hella setup from the link in donnie1956's post.
thanks guys, you did the foot work finding this stuff

 

Like I said above, I have had the 55/60 watt Hella lows using the totally stock wiring (no relay) and 100 watt Hella highs ONLY on a relay since 1983...no issues. Might be easier and I have no light intensity issues with the lows without a relay.

 

Many years ago, Westinghouse made an Aviation/Marine bulb. It was 13 volts and fit perfectly in the C3 high beam spot (NO modification). The normal headlamp is around 30,000 candlepower, curved, and has little triangle in the glass to diffuse the light. These bulbs were flat glass and 200,000 CP. They turned night into day. I’ll have to see if I can find the bulb number

 

THANKS-

The only thing I would do different-

Is the wire to the relay ground- wire it to the OEM harness- as the relays pull less than a 1⁄4 amp.

Cleans up your wiring -lessens the ground connections (point of failure) and you have only two wires running from the relays to the headlights.

You can find the male 3 terminal plug on eBay-just do a search for "Headlight Bulb Ceramic Socket"

 

Why is one yellow for?

 

I did projector headlamps with LED headlamps and love them. Did not have to rewire car, but did have cut buckets and aluminum housing.

 

Where did you get them? Love this idea.

 

You should use a circuit breaker or circuit breakers, not fuses. It is a DOT requirement that the headlight protection will reset.

Watch the connectors you use. The rolled and rounded spade connectors will fail. Here is an example socket with crappy connectors.

http://www.hipoparts.com/ceramic-fem...7-round-lamps/

Look up Packard 59 type terminals for the headlights and Packard 56 terminals for the relays. At least use them on the power circuits.

Here's an example of a relay socket with what appears to be decent Packard 56 copies for the terminals.

https://ceautoelectricsupply.com/pro...ocking-socket/

Most of the pre-made fuse, relay or headlight sockets with wire pigtails are using the crappy rolled and rounded terminals that are complete junk. Even many of the kit sockets are coming with them. I started using some of them as they appeared and had so many failures I won't use them anymore. The good stuff costs more money but then your headlights won't just cut out on you while you're doing 70mph at night which makes the little extra money justified. I even see a picture of some ceramic sockets in this thread that have junk terminals. Well at least the ceramic socket won't melt-down when the terminal starts burning up.

 

https://www.dapperlighting.com/ Projector headlamps

http://www.vleds.com/shop-bulb-numbe...-lmz-2866.html LED Bulbs

GM said you can't get good lighting out of pop up head lights that is why the C6 has stationary. The real reason I beleieve its cheaper for GM to produce stationary then pop up.

Here is a tread I started - first set where a low grade projector, which wasn't bad, no rewiring and no cutting of buckets or housing, then I found true projectors no rewiring but cutting buckets and housing, you can still install original halogens after mods. So your bail out if a light goes out you can take a high beam and place it in a low beam or buy a halogen and replace LED later.

https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...e-on-81-a.html

 

thanks again!! " packard 59 terminals" "search" sent me to what I could not find local (zone, advance, napa), now I can finish with quality terminals, I did use a breaker instead of fuses, wired the hi/low with a dorman h4 connector from the zone, not satisfied, I must have went to 10 diff local auto stores with poor results. terminal widths are .250- H1, relay coil, .3125 for hi/low beams and HD relay contacts (fan relay type), .5 terminals can be found local (too wide), but the .3125 no luck, and they are all rolled as lionelhutz says.

Hi beams are fantastic, lows are ok,(prob great compared to originals as I do not even remember, been a few years since I drove at nite, could be tainted because the hi's are so bright) used factory wiring for lows, wired in single relay for hi's, going to install second relay for lows to see if that improves, another experiment.

I am spoiled from my 2012 silverado headlights

I dislike the breaker part due to the terminals are exposed, would be great if they made a small plastic snap box to cover that, using a piece of heater hose for now (getto, but it is some kind of cover)