1980 f-150 (w/ stock sealed beam headlights) I'm rewiring my hdlts as explained in Steve Delanty's great article. I'm going to add the extra switch to allow me to burn the low beams when I'm using the high beams. I was wondering though, will using both low + high beams at the same time, will that create too much heat for the headlight to handle? I wouldn't want to just have great high beams for only a few minutes till I had to go buy another set of hdlts! Maybe somebody has the lowdown on that. steve's article is well done, and easy to follow. Heck, I figure even if the lights DIDN'T get brighter, I'd bet 90% of the people doing this conversion is bound to find something else in their engine bay that needs attention, that they otherwise wouldn't have found out about. I know I did.
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You may have to experiment on your own. The problem I see is that the high and low beams share a common ground. Even if you get the ground wire up to par of handling both, I'm not sure the actual connection at the bulb will be good enough. If you want better lights after doing the standard wiring upgrade, go get the silverstar sealed beams. Not only do they have the silverstar filament, but also a better lens design. I use them on my Rabbit (same 6054's as yours, I believe) and they are impressive even w/o the wiring upgrade.

Get some driving (not fog) lights. They'll use the same amount of power as the low beams would, but actually put the light where you can use it. Having more light directly in front of you isn't always the best thing when trying to see longer distances anyway.

BTW, heres a couple of changes I made to the original: https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/s...d.php?t=417231

 

I agree. I like a lot of light where I need it most! Halogen headlights, driving lights and fog lights too. But beware, there are a lot of cheap driving lights and fog lights on the market that are essentially a waste of money. Buy some good ones, see clearly and stay alive.

 

I have a 1986 bronco and recently made up a new headlight harness on my own. It's similar to the layout you used as a reference to help with your lighting situation, except I have my low beam setup to come on automatically with the high beam. I can easily disable it for inspection. I'm getting 13vdc at my lights now, where I was only getting about 10vdc before.

I'm also using the Silverstar H6054 headlights. On Thanksgiving night, it was about 25 degrees out and one of the silverstars blew out. I had the high and low beam on. The bulb inside shattered, not the exterior lens. Since I only had it for 3 weeks, I took the bulb back and had it exchanged as defective.<O</O

I can't tell you if the extra power caused the bulb to blow. It could have been the quick change from the subfreezing temperature then to the excessive heat put out by these bulbs. Or it actually could have been a defective bulb. I haven't had any problems since, but it hasn't been as cold either.<O</O

The Silverstar's are impressively bright, even just with the low beam on.<O</O

Another thing that can help, which Franklin2 routinely preaches and I am now a firm believing disciple, is having additional ground wires run. Don’t just rely on the connection from the negative terminal on the battery to the bolt on the block. The connection from the block to the frame may not be that good. Run some 10 gauge wires from the firewall / chassis to the ground bolt as well.

A couple of weeks ago, I had installed a new radio in the bronco and was having problems with it skipping and resetting only while I was driving. Everything skipped, AM/FM and CD. It was fine when I was parked. I traced all my power lines, which were good. I replaced the inline spring loaded fuse with a blade style fuse. Still had the problem. If I connected the radio to a separate free standing battery, I could drive around all day without any problems. So, as a last resort, I added the extra grounds and my radio has been perfect ever since. Not only is the radio now fine, but all the lights are brighter too (instrument panel, interior dome, tail, reverse, etc). Such a simple thing made a HUGE, HUGE difference. Thank you Franklin2.

 

I like your suggestions on additional grounds, but I have had a problem with them that I would like some expert opinions on.

We had a (previously installed) replacement battery ground cable which had an auxiliary ground wire, apparently for connection to the body. We connected it to the fender, using #10 wire. All was fine (brighter lights, etc.) for some time and then we noticed smoke coming from under the hood after a long starter crank!

Turns out the cable connection to the block was loose and corroded so that much of the ground current was going through our auxiliary ground.

Should these have some sort of overcurrent protection? Does the factory use fusible links here?

 

I don't think so. But your case points out the importance of maintenence on battery cables, both cables, both ends. Also chassis to engine grounds.

 

Mr BSS, that aux ground wire off of the negative cable assembley that's about 10-12 gauge I beleive is there to be connected to your vehicle computer.

Running the additional ground wires to the ground bolt on the block, instead of directly back to the battery, will eliminate the problem that you had.

 

A connection problem on the large ground wire is often times why the smaller ground wires do burn in two. Usually people do not catch this happening like you did, so they do lose the grounding to the body. There is nothing really you can do to stop this besides good maintenance of the large wiring connections.

 

Thanks for these valuable comments!