J_D

Upgrade your high beam to Philips 100w rally bulbs, they help me alot on none lit roads.

Might be all the mud in side your lenses from the accident

Sin_Chase

100Watt jobbys will melt the plastic or short something will they not?

mattg4321

100w lamps are illegal for road use (not that you would probably get found out)

Other than that I personally wouldn't use them because the system is not designed to pull that load and the headlights/reflectors arnt designed to withstand that amount of heat. You may get no problems but your overloading the wiring and possibly any switchgear and you have a chance of melting the reflector/headlight lense.

Stick with the 55w Phillips silvervision/Osram silverstar imo.

mikey k

Never have on any of my 4 S's
If you are worried down rate the fuse

J_D

Had them in 2 years now no problems at all

No plastic melting issues either, If they can take xenon lights easy, 100w bulb aint gonna do owt.

Rob88

It could be small scratches all over the front of the glass. The scratches diffuse the beam and it seems less bright.
You can get ‘stuff’ that you rub over the lenses and then buff out that is supposed to eliminate the scratches – although apparently whitening toothpaste works just as well.

It was a very common problem in Canada – they don’t use salt on the road they use grit, and the grit and stone dust would quickly degrade the quality of the headlight glass.

mattg4321

It's irrelevant 'they can take xenons easy'. It was designed to. Essentially your adding 90w to that circuit which equals around 7.5A in a 12v system.

I don't know what fuse protects the circuit as I haven't looked and I don't know what size cable has been used but you can bet they have used the bare minimum to save money. In reality your probably not going to blow the fuse because you are only overloading the circuit for a short period of time normally, it could be years down the line before the fuse fatigues enough to blow.

This is obviously not taking into account the difference in heat. A mates motorbike has a melted reflector because someone did this.

As I said before this is only my opinion and personally I don't think its a good idea.

loftust

Chaps, please could we please keep this thread relevant to the probem.

If you wish to discuss the pros/cons of adding 100W lamps, please do so elsewhere, as the main beams are more than adequate on my S, and I'm only concerned with dipped.

Thanks

PaulF

Have you cleaned the mud off after you went off roading

In all seriousness, I think it may be as Nick says, just the time of year...

mattg4321

In my experience metal halide lamps don't really dim much when they are on the way out (at least not noticably). They start to 'cycle' on and off. Something to do with running on a higher voltage than the arc the ballast provides - it all gets a bit deep when you go that far into it!

I'd say the headlight lense is probably your best bet. I'd guess with your car being the age it is, its very pitted. Didnt someone on here do a guide a few months back to polishing it all out? Tango?