I have a 72 Dart that I am getting to rewire this winter. I am thinking about converting it over to the newer style LED's or Xenon lights. Does anyone have any recommendations on lights they have used, or lights to stay away from?

On my 70 Challenger, I added relays and used H1/H1 headlights.

Biggest improvement was with the relays, even with the stock bulbs.

For the lamps, Hella Bifocal H1s for the low, and Cibie convex-face parabolic H1s for the highs. Really like them, especially the Hellas. The light pattern looks like a lot what the euro cars have - sharp cutoff and a little kick up on the right.

I'd like to use the HID (High intensity discharge) type headlights like what is in my 2015 Challenger.

I got all my parts from Daniel Stern Lighting http://www.danielsternlighting.com/products/products.html
I used the Cibie 7" lamps, Osram 70/65 H4 bulbs and the headlight relay kit. Very happy with the parts and results
Jim

I build custom relay kits for our cars.

Daniel has real good products and great info.

Many of the "fancy" cheap lights are not very good. They have a modern look and work very poorly.

You may be suprised at the output of a std replacement halogen bulb and a relay kit. It's quite an improvement over the factory wiring when done properly.

Ok - I saw this thread a couple of weeks ago but didn't have a chance to reply. This is a bit long but there's a lot to this topic so read along to see where I'm at WRT updated technology headlamps for our old musclecars.

I swapped out the 7" sealed beam lights on my 1972 Cuda with a set of Hella reflector housings with the Hella H4 bulbs back in the early 90's. That was a decent improvement in light output. I cleaned all my electrical connectors before I did the swap. But I did have a slight voltage drop (0.3V) using the stock wiring so I then added a relay connected to the alternator lead on the starter relay stud. The 0.3 of a volt loss was noticeable in the bulb brightness. That was about the best I could do for back then.

In 2004, I purchased an Acura TSX with HID low beams ... WOW - that was light years ahead (pun intended) of any DOT approved lighting system I had ever had on any of my cars/trucks. The HID system on that Acura lit things up an extra 500 ft down the road from a halogen. It had a sharp horizontal cutoff line and anything reflective down the road jumps out at you. That HID Technology was very impressive. As I get older (50's), my night vision isn't as good. HID makes up quite a bit for older eyes. You can see the deer from much further away (front and to the sides) and slow down a bit to avoid any collisions.

I really wanted to convert the Cuda to a Bi-Xenon setup but it looked to be pretty expensive (>$500). And after ~8 years, the HID system on the Acura started to need expensive maintenance. The HID systems are complicated with ballast, igniter, salt chamber bulb and projector housing. Lots of things to go wrong and did I mention that the ballast hits the bulb with an initial jolt of 25KV AC to get the salt to turn into plasma? You have to be very careful (shock hazard) around the bulb ignitor when you turn the headlights on. So I never did make the leap to HIDs on the Cuda.

I've watched the LED headlight technology evolve to the point where I think it now can give the HID Systems a run for their money. JW Speaker 8700 Evolution 2 is the headlight that I was looking at. That's also a $500 upgrade. The 2000-2016 Jeep guys like to retrofit to LED or HID for better off-road lighting. I've been watching the 7" LED conversion market for some time. Back when I was looking at HIDs, the guys at www.theretrofitsource.com were putting together some good kits out of OEM Parts they were sourcing from new cars that wound up in auto salvage yards. And they were also working with www.morimotohid.com to create new HID retrofit kits. I was out on the retrofitsource website and saw that they were blowing out their inventory of new Morimoto Sealed7 Bi-LED Headlight (7" Round) for $85 a piece ($170 for a pair plus free shipping). They said that Morimoto was coming out with a new version of the 7" LED so they wanted to clear their inventory of the old model. So I purchased a set of these LED lights last week (Nov 16, 2016).

When I go out to the Morimoto website, I don't see any mention of a new version of the 7" LEDs so I'm not sure that the Retrofitsource was giving me the straight scoop on why they were blowing these headlamps out. I have the lamps at home in my garage and will try to swap them in over the Thanksgiving break. They look like high-quality units. The have a pretty big heatsink on the back so I'm not sure they will swap right into the headlight buckets on the Cuda. I'm prepared to do a little customizing to get these on my car.

I was going to wait to get them installed and report back my thoughts on performance but then I decided to just write this up now and add to it later. I did go back out to the webpage on the Retrofitsource so I could provide a link here in this write-up but the page has been removed so I must have gotten close to the last pair that they had in stock. Hopefully, these LEDs will be a significant improvement and I'll be happy until the new Lazer-Xenon Gen III IMax Projector HIDs come out in the 2025 Hellcats

There you have it ...

-Joe

PS: I think that Monza from Street Outlaws runs this type of light on his Camaro. I looked at the pictures in his write-up the latest Hot Rod Magazine and they look the same. But he can probably afford the JW Speaker LEDs. If they're good enough for Monza, they're good enough for me. Maybe they'll make my car faster ....

Bump for current info

Hella has some that are DOT/SAE compliant. I would buy some from there first. Make sure you get the US market and not European ones.

You might try his relay kit first. I think you'll be surprised.



Tim

A-body is slightly different situation than B and E.

A-body uses the 7" round lamps and were wired with 15 amps breakers and smaller gage wire.
Installing in a relay system to get power more directly from the alternator to the lamp will especially help an A-body. Even a lamp that draws stock wattage will put out more light when it gets proper voltage. (That is anything but LED). see this post: https://board.moparts.org/ubbthreads/ubbt...tml#Post2453860

7" Lamps -
Sealed Beam: GE Nighthawk H6024NH, $15 ea.
Non-sealed:
Hella "Vision Plus" DOT/ECE, p/n 002395301 includes an H4/HB2 bulb for $40 - $50 each. Better H4 60/55W bulbs are available, including some rated +25, +50 etc. The + bulbs trade lifespan for a little more lumens.
Cibie ECE lamps, about $80. from Dan Stern and a few other US sources.

LED: Trucklite and JWSpeaker both have legitimate products.
There's a chart about halfway down this page summarizing "Hilldwellers" tests of LED and some other lamps.
http://www.heritech.org/cuda/lightr.html
I'm not sure about ease of fit in the A-body headlight buckets.

If you want to search the 'net. Candlepower forums is a pretty good no nonsense source of info. on lamps and bulbs.

Aiming
Make best use of the available light.
For a single pair of combined Hi/low lamps, aim them using the low beams. (The high beam instructions are for cars that have a dedicated pair of high beam only lamps.)
DOT or SAE marked headlight aiming without a machine.
For lamps made to European Commission standards, use E-code headlight aiming