Re: City Lights and aiming

["scott miller" <macatawa@hotmail.com>]

I ran 20 watt halogen city lights for six months, then one burned out.  
I changed to 8 watt yellow bulbs a few weeks ago, and I'm very pleased 
with the change.  With the headlamps off, they look like yellow 
headlights at night.  I've had lots of people ask about my yellow 
headlights already.  The plastic coating around the copper city light 
sockets is cracked and flaking off, I think the halogens were too hot.  
I posted that concern, but I'm beginning to suspect my posts aren't 
getting on the list, although they are getting into the archives.  I've 
had to leave the list 'till I stop traveling so much, I'm still keeping 
up with the archives, and trying to be helpful.

Scott
'90 200qw

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gross;

    Regarding alignment, I initially set my euros (the lights, not the
currency) to a 1% slope using the wall technique. I also found that the
lights seemed to be projecting too close to the front of the car, so I 
moved
them up until the low beam cut-offs hit the rear bumper of a small to
average size car at 30 feet or so. This improved distance vision on both 
low
and high beam. On my recent Christmas journey with the trunk loaded with
presents, luggage, and assorted geegaws, I noticed the low beam cutoffs 
had
moved up 6 inches above the bumper on cars I was following. This 
improved
distance vision again and I still wasn't getting flashed by oncoming 
cars,
so I think my unloaded setting is not objectionable to oncoming drivers. 
I
suppose as long as the cut-off is below the oncoming car's hoodline 
(taking
into account movement from bumps and dips in the road), the driver will 
not
be dazzled by the lights.

    Regarding city lights, I installed the 20w halogen bulbs which came 
from
Metrix. I tested them by pulling the fuse on one high beam circuit so 
that
one headlight had the highs on and the other had the city light on. 
These
city lights are extremely bright - standing in front of the car, it 
looked
like one low beam and one high beam was on, so they well perform a 
marker
function if one low or high beam is burnt out. The downside is that they
scatter light in all directions, and in heavy snow there is some scatter
above the hood line, illuminating the snow. That being said, the scatter 
is
not as bad as that with the DOT lights. When they burn out, I will try 
lower
wattage lights to see if there is a reduction in snow/fog illumination.

HTH

Fred Munro
'91 200q  266k km

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