<VV> Headlights

[jvhroberts at aol.com]

OK, here's the direct answer from a serious pro on the subject. And yes, there will be more info than YOU'D like, but too much info is better than too little:

There are no good 5¾" sealed beams currently manufactured. All of the halogen ones (H5006) are junk—pathetic 35/35w  burners and sloppily-focused optics made on decrepit tooling that should've been scrapped and replaced many years ago but hasn't been because there's no way the expenditure would ever be made back, given the almost-nonexistent market for lamps of this size format. 

The low beam performance of the non-halogen high/low beam 5¾" sealed beam (#4000 or heavy-duty #4040) was markedly superior to the H5006 in every objective way, though the light color of the non-halogen lamp was obviously browner, a point of subjective (dis)preference and of much marketing babble regarding "whiter" light. The current-production 4000 and 4040 beam units are junk for the same decrepit-tooling reason, but new old stock units—real ones, not the fake/repro T3s—can give reasonable performance if they are fed properly. The Cibie convex-faced H4 lamp does not have a "significantly" nonstock appearance compared to a sealed beam until you get within about five feet of it, and I have to think anyone who really, truly cares what anybody else thinks about the close-up appearance of his car's headlamps isn't likely to be driving the car much at night (i.e., show cars that have to have "correct" lights or they lose points with judges).

H4 lamps in this or any other small size format are not a good solution—remember, with the H4's internal low beam filament shield used to create the cutoff, only 55% of the total optical area is used to collect and distribute light for the low beam. The sharp cutoff from a well-focused H4 is nice to look at, but what's important is how much light is under the cutoff (not much) and how it's distributed (not well). There have been a few well-focused 5¾" H4 lamps over the years, but all of them are long discontinued; of those in current production the Cibie is the...I hesitate to say "best" because objectively it's not a very good headlamp. We could say it is the least objectionable of an overall poor lot (and before you argue, remember that subjective impressions of headlamp performance are almost always well out of step with the lamps' actual safety performance).

There is no real help for those who want good, cheap, stock-appearing headlamps in the 5¾" format. In any other format, the choice would be the GE Night Hawk sealed beams, which are not the world's greatest headlamps but are easily the only sealed beams worth messing with at all, but they're not made in 5¾" round. The Cibie CSR was far and away the best 5¾" headlamp line, but it has been discontinued. It was costly (though worth it) and certainly didn't look like a sealed beam. The best current-production 5¾" low beam is the Hella Bi-Focus H1 unit—I get mine from Dan Stern, though he didn't have them pictured on his website the last time I checked. It is quite a large lot better than an H4, and I use them in conjunction with Cibie flat or convex-lens H1 high beams, depending on whether I want a longer or a wider  high beam (and yes, I will grudgingly admit that esthetic considerations enter into the choice, too; the Hella Bi-Focus has a flat lens). They aren't cheap headlights, but they are extremely good ones and they don't cost as much as CSRs did. Stern gave me a choice of white (colorless) or yellow glass lenses last time I bought a set of Bi-Focus from him; perhaps some Corvair nuts would be keen to use the yellow ones to emulate the Fitch Sprint Corvairs.


There's the ValeoSylvania XE5R, which is reasonably decent within the conceptually-problematic realm of reflector-based BiXenon headlamps, but now we are talking about enormous cost and extremely non-original appearance and sheetmetal modifications. 

Other options? Well...the 9006 low beam and 9005 high beam headlamps from the 1995-1997 Jaguar XJ is a solid performer from Valeo (it's a Cibie CSR but with SAE rather than ECE photometrics), and its external appearance is remarkably similar to that of an old-time sealed beam—domed lens, vertical/brick shaped optics—but it is not a standard-mount lamp, so custom mount modification/fabrication would be involved, and these lamps aren't cheap.

One particular scam to avoid is Sylvania's Xtravision H5006XV and H5001XV. These are the ones in the pink-and-black packages. They are not an upgrade of any kind…they're nothing but Sylvania's extremely poor H5006 and H5001 sealed beams repackaged and renumbered to flesh out their Xtravision line (all of Sylvania's sealed beams, including the Xtravision, are garbage).

Bottom line, you can have cheap headlamps, you can have headlamps with stock appearance, or you can have good headlamps. You have to pick.