How to improve headlights with your own hands
You can increase the light output of halogen low-beam headlight lamps by cleaning the glass, polishing it, or using more powerful lamps. But sometimes all this does not help, since the brightness of the low beam headlights still depends on the voltage on the lamps.
The usual voltage at the battery terminals with the engine running on any car is approximately 14.5 V.
But the voltage on the lamps varies from car to car. For example, on Lanchetti it is 12.6 V, Samara - 12.8 V, Duster - 13.1 V, Logan - 13.5 V, which, as it turned out later, turned out to be ideal for halogen lamps.
There are noticeable voltage losses from the battery to the headlights for various reasons. It would seem, why not supply the lamps with 14.5 V, which is at the battery terminals? After all, then the light bulbs will glow brighter. But there is one nuance - this is a balance: increasing the brightness of the light bulbs leads to a decrease in their resource.
As it turned out, at a voltage of 13.5 V the balance is perfect. The brightness and life of the bulbs reaches 100%. Therefore, car manufacturers slightly reduce the voltage that is at the battery terminals when connecting to the lamps.
But the problem is that some reduce the voltage significantly.It is clear that in this case the light bulbs will burn out less often, but the light will also be worse. So, on the Duster the bulbs burned out after six months (we remind you that the voltage on the bulbs on these cars is 13.1 V), and on Samara they worked for several years (voltage - 12.8 V).
Over time, on many foreign cars, voltage losses increase due to oxidation of various contacts and the lamps shine at the incandescent level. You can get out of this situation by laying new wiring to get rid of voltage losses. You can install it yourself if you understand electrical wiring, or contact an electrician.
To do this, we take the power plus from the battery, install a regular 30 A car relay, 2 fuses and run separate wires to the headlight bulbs. We connect the wire of a smaller cross-section, through which the voltage to the relay flows, to the block in place of the standard fuse.
A plus should appear here when you turn on the low beam using the steering column switch. Thus, it is additionally unloaded, since on many cars the steering column switch is a power switch and a current of 10 A flows through it, which causes the contacts to burn out.
After the modification, we again measure the voltage, which became 13.8 V on the lamps. A voltage difference of 1 V gives a noticeable increase in the brightness of the light.
If you drive during the day with headlights on low beam, you should apply 13.5 V to the bulbs. This will significantly increase the life of the bulbs. But after the above modification, during the day it is better to drive with the foglights, PTF, DRLs on, or install a high-beam relay in the electrical circuit, which smoothly turns on the headlights.
