t_g_farrell

iTrader: (1)

I bought the Black Dragon Heavy Duty Headlight Harness (72-040) and the Hella Halogen Vision Plus headlights (72-003) for my 80 SA.

I bought the harness kit because I've done this before to other vehicles and didn't want to do it this time. Plus it looks a little better than a homemade harness. It's pretty slick how it goes together and what they say in the description is true there's no wiring or splicing required to install it. You'll see as I go along. The Hellas I got to upgrade the stock headlights and have a more modern light thats easier to replace and hopefully cheaper.

Of course as part of this writeup there will be lots of pictures. I've tried to size them reasonably. Also as part of this I've got before and after pics of the beam patterns and light intensity stock as well as with the harness and with both stock and hella lights. Hopefully this will answer a lot of questions folks have about these products. Some may say they are costly but to me they performed as advertised and I really liked the result. So enough of the BS and on with the show.

First lets look at the light intensity of the stock headlights with no relays.



and the beam pattern stock.



Note the intensity and the shapes for later. At the end I did this again and noticed some very interesting results.

Ok, where were we... oh yeah... heres the harness out of the box.



To start with you need to pull the shrouds and covers off of the headlights. Just need a philips screwdriver and some grunt if they have never been removed.



Along with the harness were two relays that had to be mounted. I pulled the battery and found two perfect holes on the front bulkhead.



Some self tapping bolts and a few minutes later I have the relays mounted.



Now pull the stock left headlight connector out of the headlight assembly and lay it down in the battery tray for now. This will plug into the harness to switch the relays on and off. No splicing! Yeah



Next I took the harness and draped it across in front of the radiator. On the drivers headlight I plugged in the harness to the stock light and ran it back towards where the stock harness goes down beside the radiator. Theres a shorter pigtail that needs to be located just beside the relays, its a male connector that will mate with the stock headlight connector we pulled down from before. I then routed the power connections along the inner fender, below the coils and brought them out across the box with the igniters. I attached the two power connections to the post on the fusible link box that the postive battery lead connects to. I thought about a fuse for this but decided its not a big deal, if the HL cause a short it will pull down the fusible links in the circuit. If someone wants to verify that it would be great. So heres the almost complete harness on the drivers side.



Now we just plug in the stock HL connector to the female harness connector and its almost done.



As I said I draped the harness across the area in front of the radiator. I still need to tie it down using the existing holes on the cover.



and heres the passenger side installed. Easy Peezy!



I replaced one of the headlights with the Hella and left one stock. I then took pictures of the intensity.



The low beam pattern



and the high beam pattern



I'll let everyone guess which side is the Hella light.

I really like the harness although the yellow color is not my favorite. The fit and finish is good and the connectors are put together pretty well but I will be going around and taping them up to keep dirt and moisture out. The Hella headlights really aren't that much brighter than the stock ones once the harness is in place. They do have a nicer pattern and will light up the road better because of it. The cutoff on the low beam is noticable but I don't want to blind anyone so that good and the high beam is more focused and compact so it will reach further. I like that.

I hope that this writeup helps folks out that are contemplating buying this or just want to see whats involved with an upgrade like this. Also read this site for why you would want to do this.

Enjoy.

7aull

iTrader: (2)

Thanks for the post tg!
Might want to think about running the "rad wire" UNDER the top rad tray/panel, so its out of sight, 'cause your right, the yellow is pretty obnoxious It could even be routed across the round frame brace that runs across the front of the rad - that is where the OEM harness runs to the passenger side already - just piggyback it there?
I note you say the Hellas aren't any brighter than the stock ones? Odd. They _should_ be, just because the better optics should put the light where it needs to be! 'Course, now that you have relays you can always pop in a set of 100wt H4 bulbs and _really_ get some photons onto the road
Stu Aull
80GS
Alaska

t_g_farrell

iTrader: (1)

First of all thanks for the archive vote, but I really just wanted to do this because this site has helped me a lot and I thought this was a project that a lot of members would have interest in. I hope folks find it useful.

The Hella aren't noticably brighter but they do have a significatnly different beam pattern. Note the Hella bulb is in the drivers side in the after pictures of the beam pattern. It has a defined horizontal cutoff about mid way and spreads a lot further than the stock light on low beam. On the high beam it becomes a more circular higher pattern without the spread compared to the stock light. Both of these differences are definite improvements over stock but its not appreciably brighter ( my opinion ). I don't have a light meter to measure it but that might be interesting to measure.

I may upgrade the bulbs at some point but I think it will be bright enough for now

Whats most sgnificant to me in this whole thing is how much brighter even the stock bulbs were after installing the harness with the relays. I think people don't relalize how much an improvement this is. Its also a lot easier on older cars wiring and switches. Really takes a load off of them and they will last longer.

My next project is to convert the rest of the lights to LEDs not for bling but for brighter lights at a lower wattage with better reliability. I have to research the implications as I know the flashers and brake idiot lights may have issues.