23 replies to this topic

[nicksuth]

[dougie-lampkin]

Slight bump. After the contacts on my stalk packed in, I was left with no dipped beam, so I just connected the dipped beams onto the feed coming from the light switch. This means once your light switch is on (onto the second click), your dipped beams are always on no matter what you do with the stalk. It's not illegal by any means, seeing as you can get 110W bulbs, and that plenty of modern cars can have both dipped and main beams on when the stalk is pushed forward. And the way I did it, there's no extra load on the wiring, the only factor is the extra heat given out by having 110W in each lamp, and the extra load on the alternator, which didn't seem to have any effect.

To do it, I disconnected the block connector for the stalk, down beside the steering column. Using a scotch lock connector, I just joined the thick blue wire onto the red/white wire (If I remember right it's red/white, could be different for your loom, check Haynes). The blue wire is the feed that switches live when you turn on the light switch, and the red/white wire is the wire going to the dipped beams, before the dip/dim relay and everything, if you have one. Tape it all back up, reconnect the block and switch on your lights, and the dipped beams will be on

BUT...it made my lights worse at night though...It's very disorientating when you have a concentration of light in front of you from the dipped beams, and also your main beams trying to light up ahead. The main beams seem dimmer in the distance in comparsion. For reference, I have one sealed beam on O/S and one "super mega duper high power 1,000,000K" or something halogen angel eye on N/S (My other angel eye shattered from a stone ), no spots or fogs. I then added a further switch to control the dipped beams, so I could control main and dipped beams separately, but that got dangerous quickly...So I now have the dipped beams on a "not" gated relay from the main beams, so the two are never on together. Why Rover didn't do this to begin with is beyond me......

[bmcecosse]

Provided the lights have a good earth return - this is an excellent and accepted way to get more light. Be sure to use a relay though or you will melt the light switch and/or the stalk! The Escort Mexico (I believe) came from the factory wired like this. You should expect slightly shorter bulb life - but that's about all. Headlight bulbs are limited by law to 55 watts each filament - these 'high wattage' bulbs you see advertised are not legal on the highway - but ok in Stages etc.

[Dan]

Why Rover didn't do this to begin with is beyond me......

Because the dip switch works!

There are a couple of points raised by the above that should be included here. First, as Roy says, any lamp above 55 watts at dipped beam is illegal. There is no power requirement for main beam. Regarding having two seperate switches, one controlling main beam and the other dipped, although Dougie has changed the arrangement it should be pointed out that this is also illegal. As he found it is dangerous, don't set your car up like this. Lastly, the regulation covering the dip switch specifically says that the action of switching off the main beam must cause the lamps to emit the dipped beam. This suggests, although does not actually state, that the dipped beam must be extinguished when the main is on and I believe that Dougie has also discovered why this is. It's dangerous to have such an odd pattern of light in front of the car.

[cap'n crunch]

I would recommend to the original poster looking at cibie headlights, I found them a vast improvement on wipacs. And you are now able to get them from minispares!

*CLICK ME*

Edited by cap'n crunch, 29 October 2010 - 04:37 PM.

[Cooperman]

The standard Mini headlights were very poor.
Wipac 'Quad-Optics' were not a lot better as they just threw light all over the place but lacked range.
The dipped beams have no range as such, so if you run them with the main beam, all you are doing is increasing the short range light which really doesn't help to see where you are going, unless you are going there at low speed. You should be looking beyond dipped-beam range when driving on dark roads on main beam.
As the poster above said, the Cibie lights are superb and you get what you pay for. In fact I run Bosche headlamps with 100/80 headlamp bulbs in mine and so long as they are correctly adjusted you should have no problems with the law. Anyway, it would only be a 'Construction & Use' violation, so no points on licence. You are far more likely to get caught speeding, and I bet we all do that. Has anyone on here actually had a police officer take the headlight rim off, remove the headlamp unit and then take out the bulb to see the wattage?

[Carlzilla]

Putting higher wattage bulbs in you could probably get away with, but its when you dont upgrade a mini's wiring to accept them it becomes a problem, then youll most likely find wiring getting warm, the loom setting on fire, the car burning, and the cause of the fire to be bulbs of too high a wattage. Youll then probably not get an insurance payout and be stuck with a burnt out car and now useless bulbs.

I am talking an extreme case though, but it can and does happen.

Edited by Carlzilla, 29 October 2010 - 06:48 PM.

[Cooperman]

Putting higher wattage bulbs in you could probably get away with, but its when you dont upgrade a mini's wiring to accept them it becomes a problem, then youll most likely find wiring getting warm, the loom setting on fire, the car burning, and the cause of the fire to be bulbs of too high a wattage. Youll then probably not get an insurance payout and be stuck with a burnt out car and now useless bulbs.

I am talking an extreme case though, but it can and does happen.

Yes, mine has heavier current wiring and additional relays for reliability and safety, plus different bulb connections with individual wires to each bulb terminal, inc the earth.
However, the lighting is fantastic, especially with two Super Oscar driving lights with 100 w bulbs in each.

[dougie-lampkin]

Why Rover didn't do this to begin with is beyond me......

Because the dip switch works!

To a certain extent. I found the contacts on my stalk to be very worn, to the point where the dipped beams would often click off, leaving me with no lights at all. While there's possibly room for improvement in my relay'd design, it works far better in that as long as the light switch is on, there's always one form of headlight emitted at the front. Even if the contacts in my stalk were to break, the dipped beams will stay on, since they skip it altogether now. Were this to happen on the factory arrangement, you'd have no dipped beams at all. I've noticed when I pull back on the stalk to flash the lights, the transition between dipped and main beams is noticeable by looking at the headlamps, which is actually beneficial, as when flashing a car to let them out from a junction or whatever, it's clear that I've intended to flash my lights, and not just gone over a bump in the road. That's a problem with the old dip switch I noticed, especially with sealed beams. When flashing a car, it wasn't very noticeable that the main beam had also come on.

I'm sure it is illegal to use a separate switch, I had to do it as a quick fix while I was away from home when the stalk packed in. I only used the switch on the motorways, where having dipped beams and main beams at the same time was pointless. On narrower, twisty roads I just left the switch on and used the stalk for main beams as normal. I in no way advise people to do this, unless they do a lot of off-roading or whatever.

Having said that, I'm looking at converting to HID bi-xenon projectors. The way these work is a single 35W xenon bulb in each headlamp, with a sliding metal cutoff shield that slides into place when you select dipped beams, to have a cutoff pattern the same as standard halogen reflectors. When you select main beams, this shield retracts, allowing the full light to be projected outwards. This means that you essentially have dipped and main beams on at the same time, even though they are the same bulb. I've yet to see bi-xenons first hand, but the system apparently works quite well. Just something to think about, that it can be alright to have the two beams on at once