Headlight options (LED)

[Pjackb]

So I have had a lot of questions about my headlights and decided to put the info all at the same place in case someone will find it useful. The information shared is valid for 5.75” and 7” headlights so can be used for any of your Datsun vehicles
I’m not a headlight expert so use the information at your own discretion, but I can say that the information provided is only based on first hand experience not speculation I will talk about each options and share the pro and cons as I see them.

IPCW Crystal Clear Diamond Cut Headlights 7003 (5.75”) 7005 (7”) 5.75” 25$/headlight halogen and $40/headlight LED

Pros: Quick delivery, nice quality, glass Lenses , easy to install
Cons: Flat lens only

Hella H4 flat lenses only. Sold without bulbs and accepts H4 LED or Halogens. Available at Summit, Amazon etc. No relay needed for LED
The quality of these is good, the glass is nice but the metal back is ok quality at best IMO , the pictures everywhere show these as Cibie style lens but I’ve received classic style every time I ordered so I think they changed design at some point .
I’ve bought these for the 510 and using 4 of them with LED bulbs. Very happy with the quality.

IPCW on 510


IPCW on 510 low beam


IPCW on 510 High beams


The bulbs are Sealight X1 LEDs
https://sealight-led.com/x1-h4-9003-hb2-led-bulbs.html


Neolite Conversion headlights 5.75” 16$/headlight halogen and $40/headlight LED

Pros: Nice quality, glass Lenses , halogen bulbs included
Cons: none for me

Available H4 low/hi beams (5.75”, 7” and 200mm rectangle) and H1 High beams (5.75”) No relay needed for LED
They come with halogen bulbs if ordered from Classicgarage.com (https://classicgarage.com/neolitelamps.html) and should be the go to if you’re going halogen.

They also offer both flat and curved lenses. I tried hem with LED and they were pretty good but with a little more scattering than the IPCW. I was going to use them but they unfortunately made mistakes in my order a couple times and I ended up with different lenses and it was just easier and faster for me in Canada to get the IPCW from Amazon.

Neolite 5.75” flat lens



Vintage Car Leds from 120$/headlight

Pros: Awesome quality, great customer service , easy to install
Cons: Some mods required with the 7” models
https://vintagecarleds.com/7-inch-round-headlights/

Love these, very high quality lenses and LED bulbs with fan , these were designed as LED from the get go and offer multiple lend selection including Cibie and clear Hella, all the lenses have great cutoff patterns and brightness.
I have been running their VC3500 in my red roadster model for 2 years and they make driving at night a pleasure.

VC3500 Classic lens




The fan is pretty big on the VC3500 and will require modification on the bucket for Roadsters and Z (not so with the VCm3)





Other Brands I have not tested personally.
Dapper Lighting approx. 225$/headlight

Pros: Great quality , lots of choices and options
Cons: Expensive, no real classic lens in 5.75” model

https://www.dapperlighting.com/collections/7

I’ve seen them in person at a show and they offer very nice quality headlights with both modern and classic look, but they are on the expensive end of the spectrum and you will need to figure about $200 per headlight depending on options
For classics style lens you’re looking at 510 that’s $580 for Halogen and $880 for 30W LED , for roadsters and Z that’s $ 450.00



Holley Retrobrights approx. 200$/headlight
Pros: Great quality , 3 different color temperature , Holley quality
Cons: Expensive
https://www.holley.com/products/restora ... trobright/

I’ve not tested seen these in person or tested them, but I like them a lot for a few reasons.
They look very sturdy and like the best made of all the headlights , have a great lens and more importantly they are available In 3 color temperature including classic white which looks completely original while having the superior lighting output of an LED.
Figure about 180-200$ each for these but completely worth it in my opinion


Finally in case you're wondering here a comparaison of a stock halogen bulb and a Hella lens with LED side by side

[iloveredmeat]

This is AWESOME info. Thank you Jacques!
pm

[Habitat.pat]

Thanks for posting this.

Several questions though.

In your last photo you are comparing LED to Halogen beam patterns. I assume the LEDs are on the left. Correct?

Which headlights are you using in this photo?

Do you have photos of the other mentioned headlight beam patterns?

Are any of the headlights DOT approved?

Peace, Pat

[Pjackb]

First le me reiterate so that it's clear

I’m not a headlight expert so use the information at your own discretion,

In your last photo you are comparing LED to Halogen beam patterns. I assume the LEDs are on the left. Correct?

Correct

Which headlights are you using in this photo?

These are my Hella clear lenses with LED bulbs

Do you have photos of the other mentioned headlight beam patterns?

No but you can see them on the manufacturer websites

Are any of the headlights DOT approved?

DOT doesn't approve anything , you can either be be compliant or not to the standard.
All of these have a Hela cutoff which meet the European E Code for lighting which is vastly superior to the USA DOT standard , so are labeled for off road use only

[redroadster]

SAE the Society of Automotive Engineers
Approves parts , or mostly they won't if it's obviously cheap , shotly made

[david premo]

Alright this is going to be a bit difficult for most people. I worked in the automotive lighting industry for about 3 or 4 years, and know a fair amount about automotive lighting. I worked for Siemens lighting group OSRAM as a technical sales engineer. What you need to understand is how light is to be projected for road use. The light pattern is controlled by the photo metrics of the fixture and the bulb which we referred to as the burner has to illuminate a very specific area to meet DOT and EU standards.
So we always refer to the fixtures lighting quadrants in the form of 4 areas in an X vs Y axis. Top right is X positive Y positive and is called 1st quadrant. Going counter clockwise is X negative and Y positive 2nd quadrant. Bottom left is X negative and Y negative 3rd quadrant. Last is X positive and Y negative 4th quadrant.
The pattern of the EU forbids any light in the 2nd quadrant as that creates on coming glare when driving on roads with cars to the right. It is reversed when dealing with roads that cars drive in the left lane to prevent glare in those situations. All road signs in Europe are designed for this type of lighting of the road. THE European lights are frequently referred to as Z beams. All signs must be set in such a manner that they are visible at night with properly adjusted headlights. In the United States our pattern is a little more lax in that light can be in the 2nd quadrant for road signs that are placed on the wrong side of the road, ie to the left side of the car. So in the United States we have some on coming glare with are DOT approved headlights. That said DOT does allow the sale of Z beams for the US motorcycle market, as motorcycle headlamps are higher up than automotive headlamps and reduces on coming glare when approaching cars in traffic.
The second part of this is the burners, which have a very strict quality of construction that must be maintained. The burners are individually checked at 100% during production and any burners that do not meet are scrapped. That by the way, that is the difference between an OEM supplier vs an inexpensive fly by night company. So when you look at an H-4 burner the filament closest to the lens is the low beam and has a cup underneath it which is what creates the z beams sharp line. On the lenses they add fluting to get the light into the 1st and second quadrants. The high beam filament is the one closest to the back of the reflector which makes it gather more light for pushing out on the high beam to see further down the road. All of this said, more light does not often equate to seeing better at night in your car as it has to reach the correct areas. As a side note in racing we would recommend that the car have both a left side of the road headlight and a right side of the road headlight for best night vision. Another thing that helps at night is to turn your dash lights down as low as possible so that your pupils are less constricted and you can see farther down the road. Well I hope this helps or shed’s a little light on the subject.
Dave

[Daryl Smith]

Irrelephant

[6foot3]

Thank you for all of the great posts on LED headlight upgrades. I'll add in a post before the end of the year. I recently purchased 7" Koito headlights (lens states "MADE IN JAPAN") and installed Nineo II fanless/wireless LED bulbs in them (30 watts each). I'll install the headlights when the 1970 Datsun 1600 comes out of its slumber this spring and see how they work.

[Gladisco]

I recently installed some Octane LED’s from my local Amazon app. Originally errantly ordered crystal clear lenses instead of the oem looking beveled lensed version. Called them and they said no worries we will send you new ones, I said I really wanted amber and they again said no problem, even though they were more + shipping as they weren’t on Amazon. Anyhow one of my rings had a broken tab. I was happy to learn from this site, those are still a current Nissan part. The next week had them installed. They do have a fan and took all of 15 minutes to install. I still need to adjust a bit higher, but a nice benefit of them pointing down ish is nobody flashes me for leaving the high beams on.

I am still having ground/short issues on my driver side parking turn signal and put an led bulb in there as well but that lens is some generic and the white of the led really makes it too white and it didn’t magically fix my issue.

Baby steps I guess, but I am happy with the new peepers and all the above was less then one holly retro bright.

[Roadster Travis]

Need some help, just installed a pair of the Holly retro brites in my 1969 Datsun 2000 roadster and they do no work at all, went back to the H4 headlights and they work as they should, wiring is original in the car….am I doing something wrong here? Looks like some folks were able to simply plug in the new led Holly brand lights with no issue.

[Roadster Travis]

Not an electrician, but it seems as if the Holly LED headlights do not work if the current is going the opposite direction. Hope this makes sense, when I hook a voltmeter RED/POSITIVE wire to the ‘low beam’ wire and the voltmeter BLACK/NEGATIVE wire to what I thought was the ground wire or common (third wire that is not the high-beam or low-beam) it reads negative 12v….when swapped it around it reads positive 12v. Power is there…it’s just flowing the wrong direction. Is there anything I can do to remedy this situation, or do LED headlights just not work on my vehicle?

[polkadot]

i made a new wiring harness for my car but the retrobrites worked great with the original h4 connectors on my 67.

Screenshot 2023-12-16 at 11.31.17 AM.png

if it works with your old bulbs, the standard hasnt changed so it should work with the retrobrites. maybe the connector isnt seated completely with the new ones? just make sure everything is clean and plugged in all the way. you can always extend the leads on one of the lights to test it directly from the battery to make sure the lights arent faulty.

[Roadster Travis]

Your lucky then… I just found on Amazon, a wiring harness to convert a ground switched headlight system (2 toggled grounds + 1 constant hot) to a positive switched headlight system (2 toggled hots + 1 constant ground)….thinking this should work and will report back in a few days either way it turns out.

IMG_2499.jpeg

[redroadster]

Not an electrician, but it seems as if the Holly LED headlights do not work if the current is going the opposite direction. Hope this makes sense, when I hook a voltmeter RED/POSITIVE wire to the ‘low beam’ wire and the voltmeter BLACK/NEGATIVE wire to what I thought was the ground wire or common (third wire that is not the high-beam or low-beam) it reads negative 12v….when swapped it around it reads positive 12v. Power is there…it’s just flowing the wrong direction. Is there anything I can do to remedy this situation, or do LED headlights just not work on my vehicle?

DC ( direct Current flows from Neg to the positive) don't believe that ?
Amp clamp the pos cable to the starter and crank it and the neg cable
The starter current 2/3s are used up in the starter so you see 90 amps draw on neg and 30 on pos.
What's the amp draw of LEDs ? very low, you need great connectors to help the weak draw I'd check ohms on the wires the system may have a fork in wiring to power etc. & also mess up current flow thru the LEDs

[Habitat.pat]

The headlights are wired differently on 69 & 70 cars compared to earlier ones, the current flows the opposite direction through the lights. LED lights can be used if relays are installed to convert the connections back to “standard”. That harness you found can be used to correct this. You don’t show the control wiring in the diagram but I’ll take a look later today, I haven’t had enough coffee.

Peace, Pat