CHASING CiTROëNS

Swapping out the Sealed Beams required by the US “back then”

I have always hated sealed beam headlights. I get their usefulness in aiming and the relative safety of having an all-in-one bulb, etc., but you don’t have the ability to really control the beam and pattern like you do with bulb/lens units. Since it’s nearly impossible to get any good new 7″ lights outside of Hella, I went with the Hella units as I’ve had awesome luck with them in the past.

On top of this, I ordered some LED “H4” bulbs from Amazon — I picked the ones with the most/best reviews and figured that if they sucked I would use the Halogen H4’s that I have new in a blister pack in my garage.

First, let me start off by saying that there’s a different wiring pattern for Sealed Beams to H4.

ISince there is some debate as to what the sealed beam used is with respect to the year, I just figured out which wire was ground, high and low beam, and marked them accordingly. Wiring for H4 Bulbs in the socket looks like this:

I got the sockets and cleaned things up. I ended up drilling out a few rivets and cleaning everything thoroughly, then putting it all back together. My socket had a small parking lamp bulb that wasn’t going to be used so I dremeled if off. If I get a lens that has this fitted later, then I’ll get another socket. I just felt that it was in a place that could end up shorting things out.

Now I fit the LED bulbs into the lights. Hella has really nice weatherproofing rubbers, and they can be a complete and total pain in the ass to get on the bulbs. 

Note here that the LED’s I purchased DID NOT have the gigantic heat sinks on the back for obvious reasons. The trick with the weather seal rubber is to put the bulb in, then turn the weather seal inside-out and get it tight and down around the bulb bottom until you have the terminal ends standing as proud as possible. Then you just flip the rubber down and you’re ready to install!

Now it’s time to assemble everything. I reinstalled the wire terminal/bulb holder in the car, then tested to make sure that the circuits were correct. Then I plugged them into the lights and holders (I cleaned and repainted them) and put it all back together.

PRO TIP: take a picture of the light holder so that the fiddly spring holding it in to the fender recepticle is easy to figure out. It is not necessarily obvious.

Now that it’s complete, feel free to test your high and low beams and give them a quick adjust. The LED’s performance is good, and it draws only about 5-10% of the power that halogens to. Nice when you have a generator system!