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Headlights

Cucv_M1008 said:
I've tired different bulbs and housings. I'll check out your recommendations.
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I’m running some amazon specials in the Blazer that so far I’ve been lucky with no issues. But I got introduced to the race sport units and arc lighting from my time at the accessory shop. I sold a lot of both and never had to warranty any.

Arc has a couple of lines they sell the concept series put out 6,500 lumens at 25watts. The Xtreme line pushes 10,000 lumens at 45watts which might be a little much for street use so buyer beware.
 
ZooMad75 said:
I would definitely go for two major changes tha others have mentioned. One, regardless if you stay incandescent or go led is the wiring. The stock harness has the circuit going all the way from the battery to the bulkhead/fuse panel, to the headlights switch and hi/lo switch then back through the firewall and finally out to the light on the drivers side the the passenger.

The issue here is voltage drop. Just check the voltage at the light with the truck running and the lights on. You are going to see something like 12v or even less even with the alternator pushing closer to 14-14.5v. Old wiring will have a little higher resistance, but the circuit design itself is why it drops so much.

Modern vehicles for close to 20 years use relays in the headlight circuit to maximize the voltage available to the light by reducing the overall length of the power circuit to the lights from the battery.

Multiple ways to do it. Easy, order a headlight relay harness from LMC truck. Unplug the stock harness from your lights, hook up direct power for the relays (make sure they are fused, early kits were not, I think they are now), hook up the grounds for the relays and plug in the new sockets to your bulbs. Done.

Painless wiring also makes a universal kit that you can modify to work. Or make your own. Use a couple of relay with pigtail kits from Amazon or other suppliers on line. Go to the driver side bulb and unplug the stock harness. You’ll see the socket has two green wires to one terminal and two tan wires to the other terminal and the last should be the ground. If you trace back from the plug you’ll see singleton and green wires going over to the pass side light and the other two green and tan wires going back down the fender to the bulkhead.

The bulbs are set up as a parallel circuit with separate grounds. Give yourself some length back from the drive side socket and cut the green/tan wires. The two wires coming from the bulkhead are now the “on” signals for the two relays and the two wires leading to the driver side socket are going to be the power feed from the relays. Splice those two to each respective terminals on the relay pigtails. Put a ring terminal on each of th relay ground circuits and then using an inline fuse on each of the power circuits from the battery or junction block to the power circuits on the relay pigtails

You really don’t have to know which circuit is high or low as long as you connect the same color wire (green or tan) to the same relay.

With relays installed however you did it with a kit or diy if you measure voltage at the light you’ll see now the drop is like 2-3 tenths of a volt vs a couple of full volts. This alone will make low beam on an incandescent bulb closer to what the output was on the high beam without the relay. Highs are a lot brighter. If you decide to go led they will work even better with proper voltage.

I’m running generic h4 conversion housings for the big square bulb my truck uses. Not as nice as JW Speaker but still have decent optics without looking to alien bug eye style. Holleys retrobrights are an option, albeit a spendy one. Quake LED has some similar looking replacement housings with glass fluted lenses that look closer to stock sealed beams for a way better price than Holley. I’ll probably use those when I need to replace my housings.

Don’t forget to properly aim those lights after you are done. What’s the point of all that light output if the driver side is pointed right at oncoming traffic and the passenger side is lighting up the trees on the side of the road.
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Great information ! Just to add from my experience today. I received my kit from LMC today and was anxious to get started on it. The harness is made in Taiwan and the packing has Asian writing all over it, but there is a small English section on the back. The harness looks to be fairly well constructed and definitely heavier than OEM with exception to the 3 prong plugs for the headlights themselves. They are a bit chinssey. But, for a little less than 40 bucks I don't think you could ask for anything better. The reason that I am chiming in here is that the harness is NOT fused. So, I will be adding a fuse block to the harness....easy peasy. When I pulled the old harness out of the passenger light bucket, two of the wires were totally chaffed through for over an inch. Can't believe that was not causing an issue. Anyway, just my two cents....... the LMC harness is worth it even though the cheap relays will probably fry in no time, but easy fix to better quality when they do.
 
396 TransAm said:
Great information ! Just to add from my experience today. I received my kit from LMC today and was anxious to get started on it. The harness is made in Taiwan and the packing has Asian writing all over it, but there is a small English section on the back. The harness looks to be fairly well constructed and definitely heavier than OEM with exception to the 3 prong plugs for the headlights themselves. They are a bit chinssey. But, for a little less than 40 bucks I don't think you could ask for anything better. The reason that I am chiming in here is that the harness is NOT fused. So, I will be adding a fuse block to the harness....easy peasy. When I pulled the old harness out of the passenger light bucket, two of the wires were totally chaffed through for over an inch. Can't believe that was not causing an issue. Anyway, just my two cents....... the LMC harness is worth it even though the cheap relays will probably fry in no time, but easy fix to better quality when they do.
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That’s odd. The LMC kit I used I remember having inline fuses for both relays. A friend of mine used a LMC kit on his ‘78 was not fused. That was a few years before I got my kit.

I guess I assumed since mine had fuses they had finally got their stuff together. I assumed wrong. But kudos for adding the fuses.

Despite what they look like the relays in the LMC kit I’ve yet to have one quit. Been a few years too. I pack the spares just in case too.
 
396 TransAm said:
Great information ! Just to add from my experience today. I received my kit from LMC today and was anxious to get started on it. The harness is made in Taiwan and the packing has Asian writing all over it, but there is a small English section on the back. The harness looks to be fairly well constructed and definitely heavier than OEM with exception to the 3 prong plugs for the headlights themselves. They are a bit chinssey. But, for a little less than 40 bucks I don't think you could ask for anything better. The reason that I am chiming in here is that the harness is NOT fused. So, I will be adding a fuse block to the harness....easy peasy. When I pulled the old harness out of the passenger light bucket, two of the wires were totally chaffed through for over an inch. Can't believe that was not causing an issue. Anyway, just my two cents....... the LMC harness is worth it even though the cheap relays will probably fry in no time, but easy fix to better quality when they do.
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Taiwan is actually a very good quality manufacturer and in some cases the best in the world.
Don't bundle it with Chinese stuff, it's a different level of quality.
 
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