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| BenzDieselTuner Date registered: Dec 1899 Location: Vehicle(s): | Choosing Lights for your 123..... Scheinwerfermann's reply regarding 123 headlamp options from the other thread...... Re: Picking headlamp optics Good questions, MBDT. On the 123s, I always recommend staying with the North American headlamp housings (originally equipped with a 7" round sealed beam headlamp and 5.75" H3 fog lamp unit). The original optics are poor — the sealed beam headlamps are junk, and the fogs, while of OK design, are mounted too high to be of much use. However, the universal nature of the 7" and 5.75" round fitments means you have *tons* of choices for what to put in the four buckets. There are a bunch of different 7" round European-code headlamp units that can be installed in place of the sealed beams. Many of them are poor, some of them are mediocre, and some of them are good to excellent. The smaller 5.75" buckets can be made to accept any of several high/driving beam units (wide spread, long reach, something in the middle), or auxiliary low beam lamps of various types, or one of each of two lamp types (there's nothing saying both buckets have to contain the same kind of lamp). With the one-piece European/rest-of-world lamps, you get no options beyond round/square. The performance of either type isn't particularly amazingly good, though with proper bulbs and wiring it would certainly be better than the sealed beams...assuming you got *new* lamps made by a European maker, not the Chinese and Indian-made copycat junk that's flushing through the market these days. Used lamps are also not worth messing with, by and large, because most people judge and describe seriously deteriorated lamps as being in "excellent" condition. Whatever lamps you wind up choosing, shop carefully, because there are also those who don't know and/or care about the difference between UK/Australia/Japan lamps (for use in left-hand traffic) and rest-of-world lamps (for use in right-hand traffic). Now, how to pick a 7" E-code headlamp unit? Cibies are my standard recommendation, and they are very good indeed, though Dutch prefers Bosch units, which aren't bad. I do have remaining stock on two different varieties of scarce and really excellent Marchals: Their flat-face H4 units, which kick the snot out of any other H4 headlamp made in any fitment (standard or model-specific), and their flat-face Amplilux units, which contain two separate reflectors and two separate quartz bulbs for low and high beam, in each 7" round housing. Cibies: $62/ea Marchal H4s: $139/ea Marchal Ampliluxes: $239/ea The Ampliluxes are flat-lens dual-reflector units that take *two* quartz bulbs, an H1 for low beam and an H3 for high beam. These ultrapremium lamps are no longer manufactured, but as I say, I do have new old stock remaining. They fit a standard 7" round bucket, have very good water sealing, the separate low and high bulbs mean you can install whatever wattage combination you desire, and the separate high and low reflectors mean the high beam aim can be adjusted independently of the low beam aim. This is the _only_ 7" round lampset with that capability, which is very helpful in dialling in the headlighting beam distribution on vehicles used in nonstandard conditions (off road, severe weather, high speeds, high headlamp mounting heights, etc.). However, because these lamps were originally very expensive, and are now rather rare, they are relatively costly. As for the difference between Marchal H4s and Cibie H4s (and the commonly-available Hella units): Take a look at this. The link takes you to isocandela diagrams for three different 7" round H4 headlamp units. Why not photographs? Because photographs of beam patterns can be very misleading even if the photographer has the best of intentions, because pixels and film work in a fundamentally different way than human eyes. So, we look at more objective comparisons of different headlamps' beam performance. The way to do that is with isocandela diagrams, which are generated by a machine called a photogoniometer that measures the intensity of light produced by the headlamp through a large range of vertical and horizontal angles. are just like topographical (elevation) maps, except the squiggles and lines represent amounts of light, instead of elevation above sea level. The beam pattern is correctly aimed as it would be on a car on the road, and each differently-colored line represents the threshold of a particular intensity level. Each diagram is plotted on a chart calibrated in degrees. Straight ahead is represented by (0,0), that is, zero degrees up-down and zero degrees left-right. To get a mental approximation of the units and amounts under discussion here: Parking lamp: About 60 to 100 candela Front turn signal: About 500 candela Glaring high-beam daytime running lamps (e.g. Saturn): 8000 candela The parameters to pay attention to are the maximum intensity and its location within the beam relative to the axial point (straight ahead, dead-center of the diagram chart) -- the less downward/rightward offset, the longer the seeing distance -- stray light outside the beam pattern (primarily above the horizon) and effective beam width (contained within the dark-turquoise 500 candela contour) The lamp plotted at the top of the page is no longer produced, which is sad, for it is the best-performing lamp in this comparison. It is the Marchal H4 I offer. Note its extremely wide beam pattern, intense and well-placed hot spot, and very well controlled upward stray light. The second and third diagrams are Cibie and commonly-available Hella 7" round H4 lamps, respectively. The isoplot of the Hella unit is almost identical to what you get from the early-type (round-window) European W123 glass-front headlamps, and pretty similar to what comes from the late-type (square-reflector) units. Things to notice about these two diagrams: The Cibie produces a much wider beam pattern than the Hella. The 1000 candela line of the Cibie's beam pattern extends from 25 degrees Left to 25 degrees right, while the 1000 candela line of the Hella extends from 18 degrees Left to 20 degrees Right. At a distance of 50 feet from the car, this means the 1000 candela-and-brighter portion of the Hella's beam is 10.5 feet narrower than that of the Cibie. The 300 cd contour of the Cibie's pattern is *far* wider, extending from 43 degrees Left to 50 degrees Right, compared to 26 Left to 25 Right for the Hella. This means the overall useful width of the beam pattern at 25 feet from the car, as perceived by the driver, will be 40.7 feet for the Cibie and 22.3 feet for the Hella. The high beams for these two lamps (isocandela diagrams not yet scanned in) are very similar in overall performance and amount of light -- the critical difference is that the Cibie's high beam hot spot is located closer to (0,0) and closer to its low beam hot spot. The Hella's high beam and low beam hot spots are separated by a fairly large vertical amount, such that setting the lows where they belong results in most of the high beam light going up in the trees, but pulling the high beams down so they send light straight ahead puts the low beams 10 feet in front of the car. Sorry, I do not presently have an isoplot for the Marchal Amplilux. With stock-wattage bulbs, its performance is comparable to the Marchal H4, with perhaps a bit greater distance reach and the ability to aim the high beam independently of the low. This independent adjustability means that in a high-mount-height situation, with 100w bulbs in the low and high beam reflectors, you can set the lamps up to give optimal distance reach on low *and* high beam. With high-mounted lamps, you normally have to keep a tight lid on low beam wattage or aim the lamps way down, which geometrically limits seeing distance. All this talk of high headlamp heights, of course, is primarily aimed at the Gwagen situation, not that of your W123! As for what to put in the 5.75" inner buckets: That depends on your driving conditions, and where/when you need more light. If you want to talk dollars and delivery, please send me an e-mail, dastern "at" torque "dot" net. Edited by BenzDieselTuner 5/30/2007 1:03 AM | ||
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| ROCKSTAR! Date registered: Dec 1899 Location: Vehicle(s): | Re: Choosing Lights for your 123..... Very nice write up. | ||
| #78335 - in reply to #76299 |
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| lkchris Veteran Date registered: Nov 2006 Location: Albuquerque Vehicle(s): '07 GL320CDI, '06 E320CDI Posts: 144  | RE: Choosing Lights for your 123..... Just a note about the ultracool Marshall Ampilux. They are VERY deep and don't fit every 7-in round application due to rear clearance problems. Not your VW/Porsche 914 for example, but probably no problem on a W123. Also not mentioned as regards the "keep USA configuration" argument is the fact that you won't be able to install headlight washer/wipers with that configuration, but you could with the Euros.
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| #78410 - in reply to #76299 |
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| Scheinwerfermann Date registered: Oct 2006 Location: Budapest Vehicle(s): Too many to list  | RE: Choosing Lights for your 123..... lkchris - 6/12/2007 11:51 AM Just a note about the ultracool Marshall Ampilux. They are VERY deep and don't fit every 7-in round application due to rear clearance problems.
True of the early-model H1/H1 Ampliluxes with convex lenses. Not true of the later-production H1/H3 Ampliluxes with flat lenses. Also not mentioned as regards the "keep USA configuration" argument is the fact that you won't be able to install headlight washer/wipers with that configuration, but you could with the Euros. That is true, you could not install factory headlamp wipers on the US lamps. You could install any of several high-pressure headlamp washer setups, though. Question becomes "Do I want better headlamps but no wipers? Or do I want wipers but sacrifice some headlamp performance?".
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| #78428 - in reply to #78410 |
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| Speedwell Date registered: Dec 1899 Location: Vehicle(s): | RE: Choosing Lights for your 123..... Hello, I am looking for some Marchal or Cibie headlamps and foglamps. Do you still have any? Thank you, Jim My E mail - seven7@cogeco.ca | ||
| #123630 - in reply to #76299 |
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