Euros: good, but not perfect

[Benjamin Weste Pearre]

For those of you who are considering upgrading to Euro headlights, I
just wanted to post a couple more comments.

They are a _huge_ upgrade over the headlights that came with the car.
Especially since after 180k miles, the original lights were pitted and
faded to the extent that I could barely see the bulb, but I suspect
that they'd still be a huge upgrade compared to shiny new US-spec
lights.  If you need to upgrade them anyway (and you probably do),
Euros aren't that much more expensive.

I don't like the Euro beam pattern as much as newer US-spec lights.
The very sharp vertical cutoff is not only distracting as your car
goes over bumps, but it illuminates the road out to a certain distance
ahead of you, and no further (especially since it's so bright out to
that point, which creates contrast problems).  The US spec seems to
have a more gradual vertical cutoff, meaning better illumination of
the road in the far distance, and fewer distractions caused by sharp
bars of light jumping around on stage-right.

I haven't driven against Euros, but I suspect that on a flat, straight
road they're less obnoxious than any US lights, but if there are bumps
in the road, you'll probably get very abrupt flashes, rather than the
more gradual brightness changes that US headlights give.

The main argument for Euros rather than newer US-spec lights is that
you can actually get Euros, and they're just a drop-in replacement.
However, one of the Audi tuners was selling a quad-round-headlight kit
that could probably be had with US-spec round lights, and would look
pretty cool, if you don't mind having twice as much aiming to do.

--
Ben Pearre          1990 200TQA          http://hebb.mit.edu/~ben