headlights

[Roger M. Woodbury]

Take the easy step first.  The single most important improvement you can
make, and the easiest one, is to change what you have to European headlamps.
The changeover will involve the ENTIRE headlamp assembly, and require
installing a heavy gauge wire from the power point in the engine compartment
and relays from the existing wiring harness to trigger the increased current
flow.  I used a relay for each bulb (4), and retained the original wiring
right down to about six inches from the headlamps themselves.  As I recall,
12 gauge wire was used and ran from the jump-start post on the right side of
the front of the engine compartment across to the left side headlamp, and
the Audi mechanic who did the installation, made new connectors for each
bulb point on the headlamp housing.  Never any problem.

The headlamps came from Blaufernugen, and I recommend that you BEGIN, by
going to their website, and looking for the headlamp units for the Audi 1990
Audi 200.  Their cost will be $699 (as of this morning), and they will
probably be either Hella or Bosch, as those are the only two manufacturers
of OEM lighting for that particular car.  Cibie did make the headlamp unit,
but I have never found a distributor of OEM headlamp equipment for German
cars made by Cibie.

The OEM Euro headlamps for the Audi 200 will use H4 builbs for main beam.
The H4 bulb is a two filament bulb.  High beams are augmented by an inner,
"driving" beam, which is a single element H-3 bulb.  There is no H1 element
used in any Audi headlamp made within the last, oh, 20 years, I don't
believe, although the last of the quad headlamp cars would accept a
replacement high beam unit that would have used an H1 bulb.  (The H1 bulb is
pretty much in decline now, due to its long size and relatively short life
span)  The H2 bulb is normally used only in fog and driving light products.
It is considerably larger than an H3 bulb, and offers little advantage, but
for some installations is used.

It was my decision to buy the Euro headlamps because the problem of mounting
driving or fog lamps on the Audi 200 are prodigious.  There are "hard"
points under the front bumper for fog lights, but there is no easy way to
mount driving lights which should be on top of the bumper and be round and
quite deep in order to be truly effective.  The switching and wiring of
auxilliary lamps is also a project in itself that I didn't want to tangle
with, despite having bought OEM switches to fit the places covered with
blanks in the instrument panel.

I notice that the Audi 200 headlamps are offered with higher wattage bulbs.
After my installation, I NEVER gave the slightest thought to installing
higher wattage bulbs.  First of all, higher wattage bulbs will enjoy a
markedly shorter life span than the standard wattage bulbs, and the thought
of having to remove the housing, , grille, trim pieces etc, that would
necessary should a bulb fail was more than I wanted to think about.  But the
biggest reason that I never thought about increasing the wattage in my Euros
was that more intense light would have been unnecessary, and perhaps
actually reduced the effectiveness of the headlamps.  Too bright light will
tend to make objects flatten in the distance, and result in considerable
eyestrain over time.  I often drove with the high beams up for stretches of
twenty minutes or more, and always felt that the Euro headlamps on my (89)
200 Avant were perfect.

My advice:  go to the website, and look at the headlamps before you gather
more theoretical information.

Roger