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Replacement headlights – Cibie Oscar H4


mechadaniel

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The Nurburgring 24H class winner from 2002 HERE, was fitted with a Zenon set up to allow it to run at race speeds during the night at the 'Ring. Still mounted lowish but were apparently incredibly bright. Someone at CC tried to sell me the lighting kit for my rally car in 2002.

 

Regarding headlamps which look around corners:

 

Citroen DS, cable operated attached to steering gear. Total ahead of its time, These smaller auxilliary lights, within teh big headlamp glass, could turn to what looked like almost 90 degrees!

 

Merc E-class, Active headlamps. Servo motor operated. These are mind blowingly good! They do not just "turn" in fixed ratio with steering input, it varies with speed also. They take one night to get used to the beams moving about idependently of each other, then you forget about them..... until you drive with fixed headlamps again which feels like looking down a tunnel.

 

Current spate of front fog lights which come on at one side in turns (MB, Audi, etc) I find a bit of a distraction as when taking a turn (eg a junction off a main road). Just as you are looking deep into the junction to see down the side road, these extra lights come on illuminating the foreground tarmac surface, the natural reaction of the eye is to be drawn down to the newly illuminated area. Questionable benefit to safe / fast driving.

 

Headlamps on roll bar?

Thought about this as a way of getting height and more light on my 7.

Decided against for these reasons:

1) Makes car look like it has Mickey Mouse ears / Baja dune buggy look

2) Drag / wind noise

3) Positioned behind driver there woudl be a lot of light scatter into cockpit and onto dashboard (different on a dune bug where they can be in fromt of driver, on cage header rail)

4) Not driving 7 at night enough to make it such a big issue

5) Cibie Oscar H4 gave a step-change improvement.

 

Peter

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If you only wanted up and down, it wouldn't actually be too difficult to create a setup similar to the 2CV. The headlamp bowls are mounted on a single bar, this has a simple screw mechanism that allows you to adjust the lamps up and down from the cockpit. Brilliant, and still works after 29 years *wink* Side to side might be a little harder though!

 

I have wondered about whether it would be practical or not to mount the lights in the nose cone - I saw this on a home made hot rod, and it looked mint. I came to the conclusion though that it would just be far too much hassle *wink*

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Ant

If driving as lot on passes in the dark, you could try some different aiming methods:

1) Splayed. Diverging as much as poss before you get a black gap between the beams. The dark area could be far up the road.

2) Cross-eyed. As it sounds.

Both will reduce the distance reach, but the compromise to improve sideways view may be worth it.

 

For roads with dips (although I don't recall this being a particular characteristic of Alp roads) get the aim as high as possible without dazzling others. Thus when car pointing downhill into dip, "reach" is still good. Cibies will help achieve this as dip cut-off shadow is sharp.

 

O/T. On my road cars with in cockpit level adjusters, I crank the headlamp levels up so position 2 is like normal dip. 1 becomes as high as poss without dazzle to others. 0 is only for humpy/dippy rurals. 3 loaded + trailer, maybe, but not used it yet.

 

Peter

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Hi Peter, I've tried all the variations I can think of, granted some of them involuntarily as the lights vibrate out of kilter, both cross eyed and splayed etc. I always end up with somewhere I can't see... last effort I ended up on top of Val d;Isere (I always forget the name of that pass) duck taping the rh light, cold and in a cloud. That was the last straw really. Must do something and I have always wanted some cibies again, relive a bit of youth. I was looking thoughtfully at the indicator pods today, wondering if they could be re-purposed and the indicators put elsewhere. How to fit any additional lights is difficult because of space and also not making the car look daft.

 

I use the up/down adjusters all the time in the tow car, with and without the trailer.

 

yes dips aren't a problem I particulaly remember, aside from wondering where the road goes sometimes, but I think being wary of driving into a chasm just goes with the territory, like barbed wire hedges in cheshire.

 

trying to remember why spayed/crossed don't work .. they do help actually, but the hairpins are so sharp that they car just isn't round the bend far enough for the lights to begin to light up the space that at that point is in fact behind them, if that makes any sense. I suspect the cibies might be better at sideways lighting and /or produce more light to be reflected back when there are cliff sides to reflect off, not so much when empty space.

 

It isn't much of a problem right now as I am in Portugal (twisties but no chasms), though mostly under the car rather than in it because it has been persisting down for days and days. Fixing lots of long deferred jobs :-) (and if RJ is reading this, yes I changed the front bearings)

 

Generally:

 

The Cibie lens alternative looks uncibie like isn't it? They look convex whereas are not Cibie's concave?

 

PIAA 80 Racing are H4, and IPF 930 are H4, but I want H4 Cibies just because 😳 Truth is I am tempted by the Cibie VA (Virage/Corner) lights but cannot see how possibly to fit such beasts in addition to standard H4s when in any case I am not convinced they would do what I need.

 

 

 

edited to add links and expand a bit.

 

Edited by - anthonym on 4 Nov 2011 23:31:50

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Col de l'Izeran?

 

Lobby for streetlights *tongue*

 

Btw, o/t

At the time that Northampton CC are switching off 60% of streetlights to save electricity, in our village they have just started installing MORE! It is some stupid "victory" by the Parish Council proving they can get stuff done for the village....... which no-one actually new they want/need.

They've put one outside my garden. I shall ask for it to be switched off to save my council tax!

 

P

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  • 11 months later...

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