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Mini 30 Headlights


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#1 david_777

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Posted 12 March 2014 - 08:27 PM

Hello everyone,

 

I have an '89 Mini 30 and its headlights are abysmal. I don't do huge amounts of night driving but I do work evening shifts several times a week in the next village, which involves taking lots of unlit narrow lanes. The headlights in the car as far as I know are stock, and barely offer real light onto the road, on low beam I can barely tell they're on!

 

Clearly this isn't ideal so I was wondering if anyone had some suggestions on how to improve the lighting on my car. I was looking at...

 

http://www.minispare...|Back to search

 

Does anyone have any experience of using this kit? I really don't want to spend huge amounts of money!

 

Also am I right in saying Mini's adopted Halogen Headlights as standard in 1990? And if so does this mean my Mini 30 would have the old sealed beam units? Does this complicate things further?

 

Thanks in Advance!

 

David

 

 



#2 Dan

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Posted 12 March 2014 - 09:00 PM

Halogen headlamps didn't become standard across the range until 1997 so yes your car has sealed beams. But that doesn't complicate anything, if you already had halogen lamps fitted you wouldn't need a halogen conversion in the first place.

Quadoptics are very poor lenses though, the Lucas halogen lens is far better for about the same price. The next up would probably be Wipac's clear lens type but they cost more. The best are Cibies but cost far more again.

#3 david_777

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Posted 14 March 2014 - 08:27 PM

Thanks for all the info, one more question, sorry! :L

 

Where is best to buy a Lucas halogen headlight kit, after looking online I'm a bit confused about quite what variety to get and where is best to get it from.

 

Cheers!



#4 Dan

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Posted 14 March 2014 - 11:18 PM

I don't know if they come as a kit. All the kits are really is 2 new lenses and 2 bulbs, that's all you need. The lenses are available as parts.

#5 surfblue

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Posted 15 March 2014 - 09:15 AM

Easy upgrade and difference really is "night and day"

I used to run Lucas halogens (with 100W bulbs) and a bank of 4 spot lights including 2x 9" Cibie Super Oscars, with an uprated alternator - fabulous!

Recently though Ive fallen in love with the nostalgic soft glow of sealed beams, love to see an old mini or series landrover trundling towards me with sealed beams on, but thats probably because I dont use my mini as a daily driver or at night much any more.

If you change the headlights, dont bin the originals, they are now becoming rare, either pack them away safely or sell them on.



#6 Austin mini 30

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Posted 16 March 2014 - 10:40 PM

I have the same car as you and had almost the same problem, I replaced all the bullet connections for the headlights and cleaned the fusebox up and now they're great lights. Before I did this none of the lights worked. Hope this helps

#7 tiger99

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Posted 17 March 2014 - 12:24 AM

Be aware that 100 watt headlights are completely illegal in the UK, and if you fit them without adding relays you stand a very high chance of having a total headlight failure one night, as the wiring and switches will be seriously overloaded.

 

You would, as an acceptable minimum, need to rewire the lot, including the earth returns, with heavier wire, and fit FOUR relays and preferably FOUR fuses. You can use 2 fuses, left and right legally, but less than that, and certainly using one relay to control left and right lights, adds very serious risk and in most cases is illegal.

 

So either you MUST get into serious rewiring, and make a proper job of it (no cheap, nasty crimp tools for a start) or content yourself by fitting decent headlighs of the normal power rating, typically 55 watts. Those already recommended will make an improvement.

 

Just before someone makes the usual suggestion (they have been slow, perhaps they have learned something at last, which would be good), you can't legally fit either HID or most LED headlights. However, some of the lowest power LED lights (I think the limit is 1800 or 2000 lumens, but you will need to check the Construction & Use Regs), are probably allowable. You don't specify LED lights by power, a 100 watt LED headlight would suffer an immediate meltdown anyway. Now I think that LEDs are a very bad way to go, but only as they currently are,  for reasons of future maintainability, limited life expectancy and cost. They can, if well designed, and E marked, provide good lighting, but LED technology is fast-moving and it is certain that you will be able to get a standard bulb long after today's LEDs are obsolete. They don't last nearly as long as typical solid state electronics, because the way they are presently designed is wrong, which causes the operating temperature to be high, resulting in light output degrading with time at a stupidly high rate, which is random between one LED and another. A properly designed LED headlight would not use one single LED cluster, running stupidly hot, but would actually consist of an array of tiny headlight units, each with a small LED, so the heat dissipation was not localised at one point, the root cause of the problem with present designs. I was playing with some LED stage lighting the other day, which works on that principle, and less than 30 watts was roughly equivalent to an old-fashioned 500 watt bulb. In the stage lighting case, there were serious limitations, because masks and barn doors could not give a well defined edge to the illuminated area, but a headlight does not need to be variable in that way, except between main and dip beams, so each elemeny of the array would be fixed, with its own little lens and reflector, and some would be switched off for dip. One day we may get properly engineered LED lights, not just yet apparently. The efficiency of LEDs is not going to increase significantly, as they are already close to the limit set by the laws of physics, but the life may improve.



#8 Dan

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Posted 17 March 2014 - 09:38 AM

  The most serious risk from running 100w headlamps is a car fire.  Fire spreads through wiring incredibly quickly and often results in a total loss.






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