99 T&C headlight wiring and poor performance

Here's my story:

The road illumination from this vehicle seemed to be getting pathetic
lately. I noticed that the exterior of the lens were pitted, but as well
the interior of the lens has been fogging up and has moisture in them. When
they dry out, the reflector and interior of the lens is not clean any more.
I can't see any easy way to clean the interior, perhaps someone has tried
and has a solution. I expect the sealant in the lens assembly is not doing
it's job and some RTV is in order.

I decided to at least change my low beam bulbs on this vehicle to Sylvania
silver stars and while doing this I thought to myself , hmm, the wiring to
these bulbs looks a little light. I decided to investigate and inserted
some 30 guage test wires in the connector to the bulb to sense the voltage
at the bulb. Sure enough, with the engine running, the battery voltage was
14.1 and the bulb voltage was only 12.75V. About a volt of that loss was in
the low side (ground).

BTW, after changing one side with the silverstar bulb, there was a
noticeable intensity difference between the new bulb and the OEM one that I
hadn't changed yet. This may be due to aging of the bulbs not the brand,
I'm not sure I believe all the advertising hype.

In any event, 10% of the voltage is lost in the wiring! I'll bet that this
translates into loosing a few lumens.......My thoughts are to wire in relays
or at least a quick fix would be to just run some extra ground wires to each
of the bulbs from the battery -ve connection to solve most of the problem.

I asked at the dealer and new lens assemblies are C$600 per side. I'll bet
there are some aftermarket assemblies out there - Has anyone tried them?

comments?

Will

 

Try this product, it works, alittle elbow grease but worth it. I had my son
do this on his 96 Neon.
http://brightsolutionsinc.com/index.htm


Glenn Beasley
Chrysler Tech

 

That is a problem endemic to the '96-'00 Chrysler minivans, even the
'98-'00 T&C with the 4-lamp system. The lamps are too small for the job
they're asked to do, especially given Chrysler's priorities in headlamp
development (1: Legal, 2: Cheap, 3: stylish). Legal standards allow a
very large range of headlamp performance, so having legal lamps doesn't
mean you've got good ones.

The only way to clean the interior of this kind of headlamp is to
remove it from the vehicle, pour in a cup or two of hot distilled water
and two small drops of plain dishwashing liquid (without hand lotion or
other additives), cover all bulb holes and slosh vigourously over the
kitchen sink, then rinse repeatedly with clear hot distilled water
until there are no more suds inside, then shake out as much of the
water as possible, then place in an electric kitchen oven, close the
door and turn the oven to 300°F for two minutes (and only two
minutes!). Turn it off, check to be *sure* you've turned it off, and
walk away for an hour. If after that time the lamp is not internally
dry, turn the oven on to 300 for another two minutes, shut it off
(double check!) and leave it for another hour.

Sometimes this cleaning process gets the gunk off the optical surfaces
inside the lamp. Sometimes it just finishes off the advanced
deterioration.

RTV emits fumes which attack the shiny stuff of which the reflector is
made. Using RTV will worsen and hasten the deterioration of your lamps.
The moisture may be entering at the lens-to-reflector seal, but more
likely it's coming in and staying in because the lamps' vents and
drains are blocked, gunked up, or otherwise not working. Here again,
Chrysler could've and should've spent more money on the headlamps on
these vans. Cheap junk tends to behave like cheap junk!

These look "whiter" because of the blue glass, but you are actually
getting significantly less usable seeing light out of the headlamps
with these bulbs installed, because the blue tint to the bulb glass
blocks about 25% of the light produced by the filament. You're wise not
to trust the hype. So-called "whiter" light, obtained by tinting the
bulb glass blue, does not help you see better under any conditions.

That's exactly how to do it (a lot of people pull the socket off the
bulb, stick a voltmeter across the two pins, and conclude there's no
problem because the socket voltage equals the battery voltage!)

Lumen output varies to the power 3.4 with voltage change. You measured
14.1v across the battery and 12.75v at the lamps, so:

(12.75 ÷ 14.1)^3.4 = 0.71

You are getting 71% of the light you would get if the bulbs were being
fed at battery voltage.

Yep, go see http://www.danielsternlighting.com/tech/relays/relays.html
for diagrams and discussion of technique. Shoot for 12ga wire.

Isn't it galling to be quoted big money for cruddy headlamps?

Well, yeah, there's a very good setup for these vans out of Germany. It
uses Hella's excellent 90mm modular projector optics, which are
self-lensed with hardened glass lenses (won't pit or yellow like the OE
plastic) and H7 bulbs. See it and order it at the maker's site here:
http://www.vmaxx.de/de/public/?fz=10&cat=2&img=vt00163.jpg
Cost is listed at €785 for the complete set (left + right
assemblies), which includes the German 16% tax, which is not charged on
export orders, so export cost would be around €659 for the set, plus
shipping. These European-spec headlamps are legal in Canada under
Canada Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 108.1. The only thing missing from
these assemblies is a sidemarker reflector -- such a reflector is not
required outside North America. Very easy to add, though, they're
available from NAPA in peel-and-stick form.

The aftermarket lamps you can get at e.g. Canadian Tire are just
Taiwanese copies of original equipment -- even cheaper and even nastier
than the cheesy originals. What to buy and how to proceed depends on
how much you like the van and how long you plan on keeping it!

DS

 

The GE NightHawk bulbs sold at Walmart is the best bulb for that
applicaiton. And yes, Chrysler significantly underwired that vehicle. Stern
Lighting and others sell relays and other parts to significantly upgrade the
wires running to the lights.

Richard.

 

That would be true, but last time I checked, the GE NightHawk line
didn't include the straight-base HB3A (9005XS) bulbs needed for the
'98-'00 Town & Country (and many other Chrysler vehicles, and a few
GMs).

They underlit it, too!

You're only sayin' that 'cause it's true.

 

I tried Wal-Mart. They didn't have any 9005xs bulbs in any style. As far as
I can tell, GE doesn't make a nighthawk version of this bulb. In fact I had
to special order the silver star bulbs from PartSource. I couldn't find a
Sylvania Xtravision version either

I will attempt the interior lens cleaning DS suggested, and when I dig up
some suitable connectors/terminals I'll make up relay harnesses.

The VMAXX looks like the hot set-up, but when I checked the euro conversion,
it converts to about $966 Canadian. A little too steep for me, but cheaper
than the OEM dealer product. I'd certainly spec. them if I had any front
end damage and insurance was paying..........

 

WH-

You will probably find that all the locally-available sockets are the
same cheesy 18ga items the van already has. If you cannot find
heavy-duty items locally, I've got ones that accept up to 12ga wire;
shoot me an e-mail via danielsternlighting.com .

-DS