Classic car headlamps – what can be done?

In the days before modern very bright lamps, the standard Halogen filament lamps were entirely adequate since one’s eyes dark-adapted (got more sensitive in the dark), and the relatively dim headlamp light gave sufficient illumination.

With so many on-coming cars now having super-bright lamps, one’s eyes (especially those of us who have a few miles on the clock…) do not have time to dark-adapt, and so one’s own headlamps appear too dim. It’s a vicious circle, leaving older cars, well, in the dark! Some years ago we used to fit High Intensity Discharge (HID) lamps which are electronically driven, and use a tiny mercury vapour bulb which gets extremely bright. These were superb, and having a tiny element, maintained the good focus of the existing reflector and glass.

But when drivers complained at this extra on-coming brightness the long, dim arm of the law stepped in, and rendered after-market fitment of HIDs illegal and MoT-failure items. So we had to revert to original filament lamps.

At about the same time, Light Emitting Diode (LED) lamps came along which were as bright as HIDs, but suffered early-life failure, and had poor focus because the element was quite large. They had to be quite bulky to keep cool, which made fitting them impossible on some cars.

Nowadays, LEDs are commonplace on newish cars, and they are bright and reliable, with good focus. BUT, the law still holds that original type lamps must be fitted to older cars. As a company, we can’t be seen to flout the law, even though some MoT garages may overlook the issue. But rules-compliant MoT garages are forced to fail non-original lamps.

Technically, the Series 3 XJ and XJS have well-designed and simple optics, so LEDs (would) work well, be safer, and require no special installation procedure – simply plug and play. Not all LEDs are the same, and cheap ones on eBay can be very poor. Should you feel like a bit of DIY – on your head be it, but these for H4 (S1-3XJ outers, and XJS) replacement are known to be good: Click here

If you want brighter Main beams on S1-3XJ H1, then also fit these to the inner lamps: Click here

Failing that, it is ok AFAIK to fit brighter Halogen filament lamps which are unlikely fail an MoT and are quite a bit brighter than standard. For the outers (H4): click here and for the inners (H1): click here

Standard Halogen Filament

LED