Topic

There’s not many men with clipboards in the outback & I suspect the antipodeans like Cobber would have a more robust outlook on such things.

Nah if you were to use a 5” round of approved type how could the dogooding dickheads be able to do anything about it? As sitting in the shell of an approved light is an approved light, your using to lens of the existing light as a cover so the car looks much the sam, it wouldn’t pose any additional hazards for pedestrians.
In fact if done properly I doubt any of the authoritarian deadshits would even notice, most having never seen one of our cars anyway

Yep. He does. I didn't think he would be a type that could be approved of.
You have a valid point though. If the lamp frame were modified to accept legal lamps and those, in turn could be adjusted to create legal beams then there would be hope. I am thinking that thick wiring and low resistance feeds directly from the battery will increase the output by quite a lot and a pair of decent bulbs should do much of the rest. I shall give the beam forming glass a good wash and the reflector a warm and gentle bath in the sonic.

Might be of interest...

Yes, That doesn't look like a big job really. I would like to see how the beam formed and whether it could be adjusted to work properly.

The Philips bulbs arrived today so I took the old ones out to find blue tips on them so they had evidently had some updating. Just fitting the new bulbs has made a massive difference.

I think that the problem with the F is tarnished or heat damaged silvering of the reflectors.
I tried to get around this by fitting LED bulbs that mirrored the filament placemat of the original incandescent lamps, but as LED bulbs have now been made illegal to be fitted in headlamp units not designed for them I am back to the originals .

The degradation of the reflectors was addressed in later Fs, not sure on the date, but my Mk2F 2001 still has the original headlights and the reflectors are perfect.
Mind you the light output is still less than would be expected from a modern car.

A contributor, late of this parish, commented that to run a high current supply to the lamp units & then switch, via relays directly to the bulb would improve the situation & he is correct. However having done this the perceived improvement is difficult to quantify. The reasoning behind this mod is to remove the joints fuses & switch contacts, all of which contribute to voltage drop & hit the bulb with the full battery voltage.
Johnny is correct with his comments on both the mirroring & LEDs, the mirroring deteriorates primarily due to heat, so if your car is an all year round car the likely hood is that your lights will be less good than a summer one.
Some overcome this by fitting higher wattage bulbs * which create more light output, are strictly illegal & create more heat & thus accelerating degradation.
My car seems to have always been a summer car with the silvering being in good condition, however when out after dark I felt the need for a better main beam, I live in a dark skies area, & in between MOTs I fit * Osram 100 watt bulbs, using them sparingly.
Incremental improvements are always difficult to assess as there are marginal gains with each step, one would have to strip back to original & with instruments test a before & after.

My F is also Mk2 but although apparently registered in Feb 2000 X plate, according to the VIN is a 2001 MY car ?

Johnny the Fox wrote:

I think that the problem with the F is tarnished or heat damaged silvering of the reflectors.
I tried to get around this by fitting LED bulbs that mirrored the filament placemat of the original incandescent lamps, but as LED bulbs have now been made illegal to be fitted in headlamp units not designed for them I am back to the originals .

Retrofitting HID bulbs is illegal, but as far as I can research it is perfectly legal to fit LED bulbs as long as the beam pattern passes MOT specs.

David Aiketgate wrote: wrote:

Johnny the Fox wrote:

I think that the problem with the F is tarnished or heat damaged silvering of the reflectors.
I tried to get around this by fitting LED bulbs that mirrored the filament placemat of the original incandescent lamps, but as LED bulbs have now been made illegal to be fitted in headlamp units not designed for them I am back to the originals .

Retrofitting HID bulbs is illegal, but as far as I can research it is perfectly legal to fit LED bulbs as long as the beam pattern passes MOT specs.

My friend is an MOT tester and his take on it is, LED are not to be fitted to to anything not designed for it so technically illegal but as they are not allowed to investigate, if the beam patern is correct they cannot fail it, but insurance companies can class it as an illegal modification, never heard of it but it makes sense, I use night osram breakers there are plenty of good used headlight units available, failing that have them re-plated but that is the very costly option, bare in mind that the light were never that bright when new but were accepted as most other cars of the day were the same.

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