Auxiliary lights

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Joined
Feb 2, 2016
Messages
318
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Location
Alberta
My Car
71 Mustang 351C C6
Ok, I know this isn't something that is probably normally discussed for these cars. But I'm curious as to what you guys have done for auxiliary front facing lights?

I'm thinking of removing the yellow marker lights and putting some LED light pods in its place. I haven't been able to find any that are close in size yet but the search is ongoing.

Please post any pics of lights or ideas you have.

 
I have a set of rectangular driving lights I'm thinking about mounting on each side of the license plate (probably close to the bumper brackets and set as far back into the valance as possible).

I also picked up a set of H4 headlight housings and an adapter harness, which I'll load up with some Silver Star bulbs. They'll throw some monster light but still look stock.

I'd thought about taking the driving lights and cutting the reflectors to fit inside of the sport lamps and fit them with clear lenses as well. I might do that rather than mount 'em down low, seeing how the sport lamps don't really do anything anyway.

 
I have a set of rectangular driving lights I'm thinking about mounting on each side of the license plate (probably close to the bumper brackets and set as far back into the valance as possible).

I also picked up a set of H4 headlight housings and an adapter harness, which I'll load up with some Silver Star bulbs. They'll throw some monster light but still look stock.

I'd thought about taking the driving lights and cutting the reflectors to fit inside of the sport lamps and fit them with clear lenses as well. I might do that rather than mount 'em down low, seeing how the sport lamps don't really do anything anyway.
Interesting, I wouldn't have thought to cut them to make them fit.

Have you ever considered adding a relay to the headlights? Makes a big difference in how bright the stock style headlights are.
I'm running JW Speaker 8700 in place of the headlights. They are plenty bright, but nothing is ever bright enough. Lol

I know in the older mustangs people quite often ran rally lights in them, I just always liked that look. I dont want to go all brodozer and install a 30" light bar in the lower valence, just something tasteful and some added light.

Oh and food for thought. The modern jeep round headlights accept HIDs surprisingly well. I'm always against putting hids in a reflective housing, but the cutoff is surprising crisp with those headlights. I'm sure they would mount in the headlight buckets of our cars.

 
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I actually have a set of H4 housings on my '80 CJ-7, and they'll pretty bright, all things considered. Got 'em off ebay as replacement light housings for a VW Bus. I think I'll get an H4 harness for it as well (which have the relay set-up built in).

 
The H4's are a great improvement. Not sure why a harness is needed though, the jeeps use the harness because the lights are PWM which never allows the bulbs to get to max brightness. Our cars should be supplying max voltage. Unless you wan the harness for HIDs then yes that is a must IMO.

My only tip is to not put HID's in the H4 housing, for some reason the light scatters badly in that housing with them. The housing works great with halogen bulbs though.

 
The H4's are a great improvement. Not sure why a harness is needed though, the jeeps use the harness because the lights are PWM which never allows the bulbs to get to max brightness. Our cars should be supplying max voltage. Unless you wan the harness for HIDs then yes that is a must IMO.

My only tip is to not put HID's in the H4 housing, for some reason the light scatters badly in that housing with them. The housing works great with halogen bulbs though.
The harness is because the circuits plugged directly into the lights run through the headlight switch itself - so whatever power the switch affords (along with the rest of the system load and subsequent heat in the switch because of line resistance) is what makes it to the bulbs.

The H4 harness employs a direct relay-controller circuit from the battery and uses the existing headlight connections as the trigger for relays, cutting down the heat passing through the headlight switch and circuit and providing more direct & uninterrupted power to the lights themselves. Basically, the relay set-up Jason (73pony) spoke of.

HID lights - I would never even consider them. Too much hassle and expense for my justifications. Besides, the H4 lights and housings still look stock but perform so much better [than stock], which is the main theme of my car with regards to performance upgrades.

 
The harness is because the circuits plugged directly into the lights run through the headlight switch itself - so whatever power the switch affords (along with the rest of the system load and subsequent heat in the switch because of line resistance) is what makes it to the bulbs.

The H4 harness employs a direct relay-controller circuit from the battery and uses the existing headlight connections as the trigger for relays, cutting down the heat passing through the headlight switch and circuit and providing more direct & uninterrupted power to the lights themselves. Basically, the relay set-up 73pony spoke of.

HID lights - I would never even consider them. Too much hassle and expense for my justifications. Besides, the H4 lights and housings still look stock but perform so much better [than stock], which is the main theme of my car with regards to performance upgrades.
Good to know, keep forgetting that old technology wasn't very efficient. Thanks.

I'm a light fanatic, so I usually do HID projector retrofits on all my vehicles. That's the only reason I brought them up.

 
Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with HID lights. I'm just not very interested in them. I see how much it costs to replace HID bulbs and/or transformers, not to mention adapting them to your vehicle if they were previously not equipped.

Done right, HIDs are awesome and driving with them is great! My biggest problem is that I've seen more hack jobs done with HIDs than any of the well-done set-ups - this is in-person around my area - they tend to just throw 'em on and blind people with their annoying purple light. That, and all the rednecks with their Harbor Fright Off-Road LED bars being used on the streets. smh

 
That is a big problem up here too. Can't stand people who run PnP kits. Retrofits take about 5 hours to do properly and about $100 more than a PnP kit, so in my opinion they have no excuse to be blinding everyone. Its actually kinda funny, on the powerstroke page when I suggest retrofitting headlights instead of blinding people the number one response is "it must be nice to have lots of time on your hands, I work a full time job." I just laugh, last year I worked 700 hours of overtime and still did 3 retrofits for family members without losing family time.

 
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