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Maybe a little weird, but has anyone succeeded at converting the parking lights on one of our cars to headlights now that there are very small form factor LED lights available? I'm looking at ways I could eliminate the pop ups?
Cali particularly has been a stickler for meeting the 24"-on-center minimum headlight height requirement. Besides the legal issues, headlights down in the bumper don't light up the road very much. Correctly aimed with main beams level, low beams will barely illuminate the road two car-lengths ahead of you. If you decide to split the duty and try to get the "normal" 75' low beam illumination, you'll be blinding oncoming drivers at every pebble.
There's a Chevy truck headlight package that looks like it will fit, but is about three quarters of an inch too tall. It also needs some mounting help, with the fog lights that screw through the back of the bucket through the PU shell nowhere close to the flanged mounting the headlights need.
'Euro' cars have fog lights 'outside' and headlights on the 'inside'. U.S. cars have parking lights on the 'outside' and fog lights on the 'inside'. Parking/fog light lenses are different from headlight lenses...You need the lens package from a 'Euro car' . Putting brighter bulbs in the parking/fog lights will still give you the same beam spread as before., only brighter.
Without modifying the lenses within the lights themselves putting brighter H3 bulbs in there will only make it worse for oncoming vehicles.
These lenses are not designed with any cut off. To try to achieve some sort of reduction of light spill into the eyes of other drivers they would need to have their focus pointed less than a car length ahead. This would be useless for driving anywhere without extensive street lighting.
You might be able to source some small purpose designed lights (say from a motorcycle) that would fit in the bumper location but that would still require a significant amount of fabrication work to get them to work well, much less look anything like stock.
^ Interesting. I didn't know what the 944 GT conversion was so I looked it up.
No doubt one of the smart guys on here could come up with a similar conversion for the 928 without having to change out the fender like this mod...
I also found this image. Looks like someone did what you were proposing and even went as far as removing the pop ups and filling in the fender. Hmmm...
Those bumper-mounted light assemblies look great. But they also look like they are barely above the wheel centerline. So half the mounted height as the 24" on-center minimum standard. Looks cool but can't "see" cool for normal driving.
HID and LED projectors are pretty cool and perform well. I'd spend the effort fitting a set in the pop-up headlight buckets with a flat non-fluted cover. The projector will need to mount forward close to the cover to get it all to fit inside the bucket, so the factory reflector would come out for a pie-pan mounting.
PorKen did some work on using lamps in the factory opening but permanently (non-popup) fixed in the top of the factory fender opening. The forward part of the fender and the bumper block the lower part of low beam light when decent-sized reflector lamps are used. A little bit of searching will bring you his results.
'Euro' cars have fog lights 'outside' and headlights on the 'inside'. U.S. cars have parking lights on the 'outside' and fog lights on the 'inside'. Parking/fog light lenses are different from headlight lenses...You need the lens package from a 'Euro car' . Putting brighter bulbs in the parking/fog lights will still give you the same beam spread as before., only brighter.
What you say is true - but these headlamps reflectors are high beams only, no beam cutoff - no shield at all and no provision for a dual filament high/low set-up. So overall still a clear no go for this use.
I agree that is it basically impossible to have effective headlamps that are mounted that low down.
To me the pop-up's are one of the key features that make a 928 rather unique compared to lots of GT cars that all look rather similar to each other
at the very least you should consider some projector lenses if youre going to bumper mount them to have a better spread with a useful cutoff.
i did the euro-foglight conversion on my 951 bumper years ago and used the 55w fogs + 100w center "pencil beam" driving lights as primary headlights for a few years. they worked "OK" but not great. fine for highway driving (not much to illuminate but the road) but sketchy on a back road (trees, deer, bigfoot).
ive been on-and-off working at swapping the pencil beams for projectors, they have a MUCH nicer beam pattern.
^ Interesting. I didn't know what the 944 GT conversion was so I looked it up.
I also found this image. Looks like someone did what you were proposing and even went as far as removing the pop ups and filling in the fender. Hmmm...
Thanks Nate, that's just what I'd been thinking and I'm glad you brought it to all of our attention. Now the trick will be in the details (as always...)
'Euro' cars have fog lights 'outside' and headlights on the 'inside' That is not correct. Euro cars have HIGH BEAMS mounted in the front bumper. They only come on when you trigger them by pulling the turn signal switch and are not intend to use as driving lights.
'Euro' cars have fog lights 'outside' and headlights on the 'inside' That is not correct. Euro cars have HIGH BEAMS mounted in the front bumper. They only come on when you trigger them by pulling the turn signal switch and are not intend to use as driving lights.
That depends on how you define "driving lights."
My understanding is that "driving lights" are NOT low beams.
They are aux headlights, intended to be used with the high beams, when oncoming traffic is not present.
By that definition, the inner bumper lights on a Euro are driving lights.
Considering that the stated intent was to eliminate the pop-up headlights - it is clear that the current stock wiring & lamp types do not support that. You really functionally need both low & high beams and all you have is high beams. Assuming you could change the lamps & the wiring to fix this - you still end up with lamps whose aim is very affected by the car's loading and by any bumps and that at best gives you marginal throw down the road for low-beams. Far from ideal.
10-31-2017, 06:34 PM
Parking light to headlight conversion?
