Headlight relay mod

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Craig Nedrow

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Always disliked the older headlights, especially now that I am older, looks like an upgrade for the 73 K20
 

DoubleDingo

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Always disliked the older headlights, especially now that I am older, looks like an upgrade for the 73 K20
Most likely bad grounds and wiring, the headlights are sufficient with proper voltage. Can't compare to the stupidly bright modern lighting, which should be illegal on numerous levels, but with proper voltage the sealed beams put out decent light.
 

teach

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I literally just finished my headlight relay upgrade yesterday! All of the advice above seems solid to me. My project used two generic 40amp 5-pin relays, and I spliced the wiring in myself. One relay for brights, one for lows.

The Haynes manual has a solid wiring diagram that helped me determine which wires to use, but you can always follow back from the back of headlights and figure it out. Mine used light green high beams and tan for low. The rhyme helped me remember which was which, too.

Also upgraded from sealed beams. May do LED in the future.
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YakkoWarner

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I literally just finished my headlight relay upgrade yesterday! All of the advice above seems solid to me. My project used two generic 40amp 5-pin relays, and I spliced the wiring in myself. One relay for brights, one for lows.

The Haynes manual has a solid wiring diagram that helped me determine which wires to use, but you can always follow back from the back of headlights and figure it out. Mine used light green high beams and tan for low. The rhyme helped me remember which was which, too.

Also upgraded from sealed beams. May do LED in the future.
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The relays may not matter if you go to LEDs since the current draw on the LEDs is so much lower than the sealed beams or halogens to begin with. I had bought a relay kit for my British project not because of dissatisfaction with the brightness but more as a mechanism to reduce current draw in the wiring harness. Before I got around to installing it I found one of the British parts places had a direct install LED kit which has the correct reflectors, real glass lenses that do not look "modern" and plug-and-play connectivity using the original sealed-beam connectors so no harness mods.

The same kit would probably work on the older squares (or really any car) with dual 7 inch sealed beams. Decided to put off installing the relays at this point because I've already reduced the 6 amps per side to 2 amps per side, which should make the contacts in the switches cooler and happier.
 

gofast321

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Couple notes on the LMC relay kit.

- I installed the kit and I love it. They work great, the kit is cheap, and the kit is super easy to install.
- One nice thinig about the kit is that if a relay goes bad while you are out driving at night, you can swap back to the original configuration in 30 seconds and bypass the relays.
- One bad thing... if I remember, the relays used in the kit are a weird model that you won't find at any part store. You would have to find them online somehwre and order replacements.

All that said... I would buy the LMC kit.
 

DoubleDingo

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Couple notes on the LMC relay kit.

- I installed the kit and I love it. They work great, the kit is cheap, and the kit is super easy to install.
- One nice thinig about the kit is that if a relay goes bad while you are out driving at night, you can swap back to the original configuration in 30 seconds and bypass the relays.
- One bad thing... if I remember, the relays used in the kit are a weird model that you won't find at any part store. You would have to find them online somehwre and order replacements.

All that said... I would buy the LMC kit.
I also installed the lmc kit, I would not recommend the lmc kit. Replacing relays is a huge factor, you want parts that can be found at any parts store, and the lmc kit does not provide that. Yes, it works, and relays typically last for years, but having normal replacements is always better than specialty replacements
 

hoagster

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Well, I made a mistake, not really, I purchased a 7 inch headlight kit from Toyota it comes with the relay kit which is really well built. The mistake I made is ordering 2 why I don't know. If someone on here who has a round eye is looking for a upgrade. $45.00 that covers the shipping to whom ever pm's me first!

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