elbeee964

My corolla's headlight burned out. [no 964-content, that.]

While at the parts store I recalled the 911's headlight's dimness always peeved me, so I picked up a set of Sylvania's brightest 65 W bulbs.

When I removed the headlights from their buckets, here's (below) what I found in both.
According to another thread on this topic, this was caused by some past cretinous owner having tried out 100 W bulbs where should be 65 W ("overamping" is the term for this).
This was the first time I'd taken out the lights since buying the car 4 years ago. I didn't have the foggiest idea that this had been out there lingering.
Currently installed were 65 watt bulbs.
Also, some bright individual had failed to reinstall all four headlight attach screws... both sides, again.












So, I picked up replacement sockets, removed and replaced both torched sockets, taped up the wires real pretty-like, simple greened & waxed the buckets, alcohol-cleaned the head light innards, reassembled, and confirmed the headlight fuses (slots 20-24?) were holding correct 7.5 amp ratings.

For grins, I silicone glued the socket's rear wire entrance points and dielectric greased the socket bulb attach pts.

Also, ordered replacement headlight attach screws (Philips drive panhead, M4 x .7, 9mm'ish long) from McMaster Carr.















Oh, FWIW, here's how to remove the bulb from the headlight...
The whitish tri-lobe plastic thingee turns about 45-90 degrees to unlock/access the bulb.

Laker

Nice write-up Lonnie. Thanks. Did you consider cleaning the glass lens 'while you were in there'?
The retail price of these lights are very high.... you can often get them for 1/2 off on eBay. I went with
PIAA 19614 HB1 9004 XTREME WHITE PLUS. Better but not a huge improvement. I did not clean the glass lens, and have added it to my list.

altarchsa

I think I asked this a couple of years ago when I replaced my lamps with brighter ones (not 100's), but is there a "right-side-up" for the lamps?

This question comes to mind because I bought my wife a 350C Mercedes for Christmas (we love it!) and as she was following me home I noticed there was very little light coming from the right low beam. Dealer took a look and found that someone had installed the lamp upside down.

altarchsa

P.S. I thoroughly cleaned the lenses and reflectors and even with new, brighter lamps (sorry, it's the technical term my electrical engineers got me using), the lights were only marginally better. Surprisingly, my wife's 04 Explorer's lights were WAY better than the Pcar. Interestingly, they were better than the Merc's too.

michaelathome

Over on the 944/951 boards there is a headlamp power/ground kit that helps with dim lighting. I will try to find the thread and post it here. Maybe it could be modified for use here as well.

Michael

elbeee964

Dunno.
But they're detent-limited to only go in at one particular angular orientation, if that's what you mean.

tbennett017

Relays help a lot too.. Search here and there are a lot of write-ups on how to add a relay kit.