From Xenon with a weird greenish tone to a yellow headlight wrap, this time I had to this properly.
In 1930s French Government required that every new vehicle sold in France to be equipped with yellow dipped beams, either by military reasons or because those were smoother to the eyes of the oncoming drivers than regular white lights.
Anyway, it is such a great retro vibe when you come across these golden eyes.
So, like I said before, I have tried to replicate the looks in the past, but while the results were close, it just wasn’t close enough.
First I tried some 3000K HIDs but let me tell you right away that those are just ridiculous. While they were a bit better than halogens, or even 4300/6000K, in foggy conditions, they were not pure yellow and had an annoying green tone instead that got me itching. I kept those on for the winter season but dropped them soon after. The Clio, despite being french, it is not period correct and, in my opinion, it is not the right car to sport yellow headlights, but I quite like those on fogs though…
Next attempt was on my BMW 5 Series E34. Those had an optional yellow glass dual headlights, but the pair is quite rare and expensive nowadays, so I went for the cheapest route and applied yellow wrap on the high beams only. The results were much better this time because it is an older car and I got the yellow tone I was looking after, at least while looking at the car with the lights off. While driving through fog, the vinyl had almost no effect because the light was stronger and easily canceled the vinyl color.
Like they use to say, the third is the charm, so the next “victim” was the Renault 21 and everything seems perfect now! Well, apart from the rest of the car, I mean…
I chased down these “Top Lamp” brand yellow caps for H4 bulbs and I got to say, these were a bit expensive and hard to find. I thought this kind of thing would be readily available but I could only get a pair from a seller in Italy.
The fitment is, as you can expect, fairly simple. Each cap has a set of clamps around the edge and I just had to push them against the bulbs. Once fitted, you can even notice a golden glare inside the headlight and there is a noticeable increase of yellow when the lights are on.
I haven’t driven the car through fog so I don’t have any feedback yet, but since this isn’t my daily and I won’t be competing in Le Mans, I’m not really worried about that.
- “Top Lamp” H4 Yellow Caps (pair) = 28.69€
Comments
They’re also available (a lot cheaper) from a supplier in the UK: RetroSpec Parts (who ship all over the world.
Excellent tip! !
Thank you!