• Welcome to The Truck Stop! We see you haven't REGISTERED yet.

    Your truck knowledge is missing!
    • Registration is FREE , all we need is your birthday and email. (We don't share ANY data with ANYONE)
    • We have tons of knowledge here for your diesel truck!
    • Post your own topics and reply to existing threads to help others out!
    • NO ADS! The site is fully functional and ad free!
    CLICK HERE TO REGISTER!

    Problems registering? Click here to contact us!

    Already registered, but need a PASSWORD RESET? CLICK HERE TO RESET YOUR PASSWORD!

Headlights

Dan Hunter

Dan Hunter

Truck Terrorist
Messages
441
Reaction score
5
Location
Enid, OK
If you're like me, you're probably too cheap to replace your headlights as long as the illuminate at all. Still, at 15 years old, my lenses were pretty oxidized. My wife drives a CTS which comparatively has two arc welders for headlights and she drove the truck at night and said she got out of the truck to see if my headlights were even working.

Well, I got out the polish kit and stepped through levels. There was a bunch of oxidation and I started the truck and turned the headlights on alternating between high and low beam until all the pitting was gone using rubbing compound. A hit 'em with polishing compound until I was bored. I washed the headlights and then pushed some Mother's wax into 'em. The contrast between the headlight lenses and the turn signal lenses is profound.
 
One of my assemblies gets water in somehow and pops the low beam bulb... Very exciting stuff. But still for some reason never order a new assembly!

What helped our trucks A LOT was the Silverstar (by Sylvania) bulbs. Way better vision.
 
North Maine said:
:nopics:
Click to expand...

Tomorrow.

Also, I stole a exfoliating glove that my wife never uses and mauled the bug collection off the front end. The nice thing about the glove is it contours well with the bumper and grill and protects your hand from cuts.
 
How's this? Both lenses looked the same before I started. I was rather surprised with the results.
 

Attachments

  • DSC01441.JPG
    DSC01441.JPG
    59.3 KB · Views: 124
Armin hammer i think is what i used, its been a while.. seen it on one of them car TV shows..
 
Looks great!!!

What kind of rubbing compound you use?

After that you put a relay cable plus HID set, you have new eyes.
 
HID are High Intensity Discharge lights, which require their own control relay, usually sold as a kit, they don't work as just bulbs.
 
and by relay its more a of ballast, i suspect the "relay" mentioned previously is part of the kit or re-vamp that reduces the voltage drop to the headlights that occurs in our model trucks.
 
I'm contemplating a relay that recognizes power to the high beams and then provides an alternate power supply to the low beams so it illuminates all four lamps at the same time. Maybe that's what he's talking about. I'm testing it out on the truck before I add an additional headlight to my FXSTDI and do the same thing.

I used garden-variety rubbing/polishing compound - nothing special. Waiting for my second student today, I found a "kit" on the internet. The were adamant that the general public know about cleaning these lamp assemblies and generated a lot of babble. Finally, they get around to telling you what the "kit" is:

A cleanser...ok, I have a hose and a rag.
An advanced polish to clean oxide...more advanced than what? The dirt I just washed off? I've got polish and I think I used a dime's worth.
UV protector...OK, I'm more worried about the crud scaling and I don't have much faith in post-manufacture UV protection beyond wax.

They wanted 15 bucks for this. I wasn't born yesterday...more like thirteen days from now forty eight years ago.
 
I have my truck running all 4 lights when on high, as well as two dual-bulb aux lights on the bumper...

...I see the moose...
 
you will want to run a bonifide all 4 on kit with relays and proper wiring, factory wiring is not strong enough to handle current draw of all 4 burning, you will want a kit several vendors sell them, painless also sells a kit.
 
When I bought my aux lights they also sold me a relay made by International (IHI) solenoid-style relay to handle them. I don't know the details on it, but after talking to the guys (i bought this from a commercial truck dealership that does this set-up for the logging trucks up here) they assured me this relay could handle all the current @ 12 VDC that I could throw at it, its more rugged than most starter relays. Anyways, I used the high-beam hot wire as my relay switch wire, so the high beams engage the relay, which has 12VDC on one post and then has wires going to my high-beams, aux lights, for the low beams, i used another relay off of the first relay so the lows didnt back-power all the other lights and blow things up. This relay is a 2 dollar 40 amp relay i bought online, and it is switched on and powered by the IHI relay when it gets the "GO" command. Does this make sense? If not I'll probly have to draw it out.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top