headlights

[dean.h]

i have a cerbera with a headlight conversion but the wiring is bad .can someone tell me which light is headlight and which is high beam top or bottom light thanks

[DeathRace2005]

Same as on any car be it Ford Mk III GXL Cortina or an AMV8 Lagonda, Outside (Top) light are dipped beam and Inside (Lower) lights are the Main.

Hope that helps !

[jon h]

Not necessarily! I think it depends which light was fitted in which appeture by whoever fitted the conversion... My Cerbera is set up as Deathrace suggests with dip at top, main at bottom, but my Griff which had a light conversion was the other way round. Assuming they are Hella units, I think it is the unit with the side light bulb in that is also main beam. On my cerb the dip has a projector lens arrangement, whereas the main has a more conventional reflector in. I also suffer from a wiring issue... everything works but the lights are dim to the point of being dangerous on dip. I am advised that using the original power feed to activate a relay which brings power directly from the battery as opposed to the current setup where the old feed is wired straight to the new lights should fix the problem. Just got to get round to doing it...If anyone has a diagram, that would be very useful.

Jon H

[Luckyone]

jon h said:

Not necessarily! I think it depends which light was fitted in which appeture by whoever fitted the conversion... My Cerbera is set up as Deathrace suggests with dip at top, main at bottom, but my Griff which had a light conversion was the other way round. Assuming they are Hella units, I think it is the unit with the side light bulb in that is also main beam. On my cerb the dip has a projector lens arrangement, whereas the main has a more conventional reflector in. I also suffer from a wiring issue... everything works but the lights are dim to the point of being dangerous on dip. I am advised that using the original power feed to activate a relay which brings power directly from the battery as opposed to the current setup where the old feed is wired straight to the new lights should fix the problem. Just got to get round to doing it...If anyone has a diagram, that would be very useful. Jon H

I fitted the new lights myself & you are spot on with your description jon h, yes the lights will fit in either hole.

You shouldn’t have a problem with just the sidelights, the original wiring should be able to cope with them on their own. The original headlights only ever had one filament on at a time - the side light went off when you put the main beam on as they were in the same bulb. The problem comes when you want both of the new lights on at the same time as the feed for the dip goes off when the main come on. It could be the method your installer used to get round this that is causing your problem. Or it could be your main head light switch. Check that when you switch from sidelights to dip beam, with the ignition switch on, the dips get brighter.

I didn’t, until I fitted ours, realise that having the side lights on with the ignition on switched on both sets of lights, the little side light bulbs & the dip beams but much dimmer than normal. The plus side is that if you have the little side light bulb in the main beam, rather than separate like the newer Cerbs, all four lights come on at about equal brightness with the side lights & it looks

I’m not big on diagrams I’m afraid, but basically I wired them up by using the original feed to the sidelights & the original feed to the main beam, but I used the main beam feed to switch a relay bringing power directly from the battery, to turn the side light back on when the switch to main turned them off. Also I made up new earth connections for all the lights, which could also be the cause of you problems.
I found the new lights to be amazing, compared with the old ones, particularly on main beam, with it now having over double the light output