What did you do with your Reatta today.

[ship]

2 hours ago, Ronnie said:

I hope everyone in the north east made it through the big snow storm without problems.  I saw where a lot of areas had 16" of snow. That is a lot of snow.

I read in the AACA forum that friend JohnD1956 who lives in upper state NY had 41" of snow.  Although 16" is unusual in one shot, can you imagine 41" out of one storm?!  

[Ronnie]

I doubt our roofs here in TN are designed to strand that much snow and a lot of them would probably cave in. It would take a month for us to dig out and probably that long to get the power back on. We're not good at dealing with snow.

[DAVES89]

On 12/17/2020 at 11:44 AM, 2seater said:

I should probably have a spare, so I am in to purchase one?

Just arrived today. They are individually boxed NOS and came with the bolt and shaft keys. The "store" is open. Call me and we can set up a meet...

[DAVES89]

On 12/16/2020 at 3:12 PM, DAVES89 said:

Just got back from Gibson's. I found the adapter plate in a 1993 Riviera. Counter guy charged me $3.00 which is fair. Now I just have to clean it up and put it in the "break down" box that I keep in the trunk.

Plate is all cleaned up and in the trunk with a Magnavox and Delco coil/ignition module waiting for break down.

[DAVES89]

My son in law was telling me about a Buick I never heard of. It's a Buick Lamonte. Anyone know anything about it?

[2seater]

It certainly doesn't come up on a Google search, although the fact that The Buick brand name is no longer displayed on new vehicles, only the tri-shield? Not exactly a catchy name in any case. Wasn't that the son in Sanford and Son?

[Ronnie]

I've never personally saw one but...

 

 

[DAVES89]

2seater came over for a Harmonic Balancer and we talked about how great a job his son and grand kids did on the Reattas they got this year. Our comment was their being young and enthusiastic gives us older guys motivation to work on our cars. 2seater made a pledge to get his super charged engine rebuilt and installed, and I [not really having anything to fix] said I would work on the Black's headlight jiggle issue. 

 

 So this afternoon I went out to do just that. I found that I just had to adjust the driver's side "up stop" just a smidge. The passenger side was a bit more involved. It seems that someone in the past misunderstood what side of the bracket the plastic mount for the screw goes on. So I removed the screw and stop, put the stop into the bracket from the top and ran the screw in. Adjusted it "close" and then put a piece of cash register paper on top of the screw and turned on the headlights and tried removing the paper. A bit tight so backed it off a 1/4 turn more and tried again. This time perfect as there was just a bit of tension but the paper slid out fine.

 

 Never did the adjustment before but fairly easy and total time 30-40 minutes...

Edited December 24, 2020 by DAVES89

[DAVES89]

We are the "last stop" on the Christmas gift parade so I thought I would go out in my unheated garage and swap in that battery cut off switch on thge 'vert as well as fix the driver side headlight "jiggle". Went a bit slower as the outside temperature is about 15 degrees and my fingers got cold. I kept dropping screws and nuts as I lost some feeling in my finger tips due to the cold. Hardest part was installing the "up" stop as I didn't have a plastic nut that would fit in the slot to use. So I used a "J" clip and that worked real well. 

[DAVES89]

On 12/25/2020 at 1:17 PM, DAVES89 said:

We are the "last stop" on the Christmas gift parade so I thought I would go out in my unheated garage and swap in that battery cut off switch on thge 'vert as well as fix the driver side headlight "jiggle". Went a bit slower as the outside temperature is about 15 degrees and my fingers got cold. I kept dropping screws and nuts as I lost some feeling in my finger tips due to the cold. Hardest part was installing the "up" stop as I didn't have a plastic nut that would fit in the slot to use. So I used a "J" clip and that worked real well. 

When I was doing the up stop adjustments I noticed I had a Silver Star on the passenger side and a aftermarket HID light on the driver's side. As it was too cold to replace the HID light the other day I decided to wait for another day. Well yesterday was the day, and I now have Silver Stars on both sides. Next week I install the headlight relay harness I had on my Christmas list to take the high wattage off the Headlight Switch. 

 

[DAVES89]

The last Christmas present arrived today. It is a headlight relay harness I want to put on the 'vert. Just have to wait for the temperature outside to get close to freezing as I have an unheated garage...

[Ronnie]

A little off topic but I put new LED headlight bulbs that I got for Christmas in my GMC truck. Wow! What a difference they made. The light went from pale yellow lights to bright white. They don't seem to get hot but I'm wondering how long they will last since they are so much brighter than standard bulbs. I wish they would fit a Reatta.  

 

I also got some tan shoe polish cream to use to cover up the wear on the side bolster of my driver seat but it didn't seem to work to well to hide the wear marks. Maybe it will absorb into the leather better in the summer when the leather is warm.

 

This is the lights I bought. $67.88 including tax for all four bulbs, bright and dim. Looks like the price might have went up a little since I ordered.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07K43XKDF/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[2seater]

Did the LED elements affect the beam pattern? Is there a sharp horizontal cutoff for aiming purposes? Good price if you are happy with the performance.

[Ronnie]

The low beam bulbs have a good pattern and there is a well defined cut off point in front of the truck. I marked my old light patterns on the garage door before swapping in the LEDs and the pattern seemed about the same as far as cut off in height, but the LEDs do have a wider pattern that lights up the side of the road better. As far as I could tell they didn't need any aiming after the install but I did bump both sides down slightly when I saw how bright they were. So far no one has flashed their lights at me to indicate my lights are bothering them on low beam.

 

The high beams on the other hand aren't as great as the low beams. They really light the road up well but the light seems to be more diffused and scattered compared to the low beams. I think the reason for that is the plastic headlight lens over the low beam bulb has a horizontally ribbed diffuser built into the plastic that guides the light onto the road where the high beam has a clear plastic lens that lets the light scatter without guiding it down the road in a symmetrical pattern.  When the lights are on high beams I sorta feel like the headlights need to be adjusted down some but my truck doesn't have a separate vertical adjustment for low and high beams. Both high and low beam bulbs are in a solid housing so they both move up and down together.

 

One thing I really noticed when driving with the LEDs is how much better they illuminate reflective road signs on low beams. Since the pattern is basically the same as before, it must be the color of the light that makes the road signs show up brighter. I'm very happy with the lights. I just hope other drivers on the road are to. ?

[DAVES89]

I have Silver stars in the Red and the 'vert which is why I need the headlight relay harness. They are better then the standard light bulbs but no where near as good as the LED lights. As you guys know I went with the "Truck Lite" brand about 7-8 years ago. While they are pricey [$350 for the pair] they work as well as any headlight on any car I have driven next to on a 4 lane highway. They have excellent down the road/side of the road illumination and as you say Ronnie also do a great job of lighting up road signs. Big draw back here in the snow belt is that there is no heat generated by the bulbs so when I get snow slush from other cars I have to stop the car and wipe them down. Truck lite has now addressed that by installing a heater in the bulb housing. I needed a relay harness for these bulbs because the draw was so light that while the lights would turn off the pods wouldn't close [in a timely manner].

 So now all the cars will have a harness which once again is a great way to go to protect the marginal Reatta headlight harness. And the best part about these headlight relay harnesses is that they are easy to install and require no cutting of existing wiring.

[Ronnie]

This morning on a GMC forum I found out I could add a jumper wire to the left and right low beam headlight circuit that allows the low beam bulbs to keep burning when the headlights are switched to high beams. It's common practice for owners of trucks like mine to do it.

 

The load of the headlights is carried by relays in the fuse box so all the lights burning at once doesn't put any extra load on the headlight switch, wiring or the headlight dimmer switch.

 

I tried them out tonight. With all four LED bulbs burning at once the headlights on my truck look like landing lights of a 747 shining down the road.  The brightness should be a lot like those Truck Lites you have Dave. I think maybe your Truck Lite bulbs are brighter but I now have more bulbs burning at once when I switch on the brights.

[2seater]

I often wondered about the switching of four discrete bulbs and why they didn't work all at once? Now that I think of it, they were generally GM products, but my Reatta is the latest GM product I have owned? Maybe due to how the load was distributed? I noticed the same thing about the big hole that existed when switching to high beams and it was annoying. I think the first vehicle I had that operated all four bulbs at once was a PT Cruiser and then the Subaru I have presently does the same. It certainly does make a difference in the coverage.

 

Sort of off topic but loosely related: Back when I worked for an emergency vehicle manufacturer, it was important we were familiar with the current FMVSS for vehicle lighting and I remember only a certain number of bulbs, designated to illuminate the road, could be lit at the same time. I suspect it is why fog lights only operate with low beams on most vehicles. Now I see many variations on headlight design and the number of bulbs that appear to be lit at the same time? The most obvious are the segmented LED type, where each side is made of several independent bulbs and reflectors. I think some replacement modules like for our large rectangular lights, are essentially the same thing, so that begs the question; does combining multiple elements in a single housing qualify as a single bulb or has the standard been adjusted to keep up with modern technology?

[Ronnie]

I don't know why GM didn't want all 4 headlights on a once when the high beams are on. I guess there was some federal regulation that prohibited them from doing it.  Maybe they were afraid too much light on a two lane road would completely blind an oncoming driver? That could have been the reason the emergency vehicles could only put out a certain amount of light.

 

The headlight circuit for the truck headlights is super simple. It would have been easy for the factory to turn on all 4 lights if they wanted to. When you turn on the headlights it picks up a headlight power relay that sends 12 volts to all four headlights. There is another relay that has two sets of contacts, one normally and one normally closed. That high/low beam relay switches the ground for the headlight bulbs between the low beam contacts (default) to the high beam contacts when you click the dimmer switch.

 

What I did was remove the headlight assembly (five minute job) and connect a short jumper tapped into the low beam ground wire near the low beam bulb and grounded it to a bolt about a foot away. With the low beam bulb constantly grounded with the jumper the low beam bulbs burn anytime the headlight switch is on. When you click the dimmer switch the high beam bulbs receive a ground through the high/low beam relay and the high beams come on. 

 

As far as multiple elements in a single bulb... my LEDs have three 3 elements on each side of the bulb for a total of 6 elements. The light that comes out of the headlights actually comes from the side of the bulb and is reflected down the road by the silver/chrome coating inside the headlight assembly. If all the elements were facing forward in a line you wouldn't be able to get the bulbs through the hole designed for the OEM bulbs. I read that the perfect retrofit bulb would emulate the OEM bulb as much as possible so it would work well with the reflectors in the headlight assembly.

 

Sorry about writing so much about my truck. When my fingers get started typing they are sometimes hard to stop. ?

[2seater]

I have no issue with the truck stories. ? I suppose it is off topic, but it does provoke discussion. I have a Ranger pickup also and that is a composite headlight with a single dual filament bulb. I found I can light both filaments if the flash to pass on the turn signal stalk is pulled when the low beams are on. I am sure it is designed that way for momentary use, but I have actually held the lights on like that for minutes at a time in particularly deer infested rural areas. I don't drive the truck much but the Silverstars have held up for several years abusing them like that.

Similar to what you did with the headlights, I did similar on the Ranger fog lights. It actually came with good 55watt Hella brand lights with glass lenses. Of course gravel and such took out the lenses but the circuitry was at least designed for decent power. The failing was they only operated with the low beam, which really defeats the purpose of a "fog" light. Anyone that drives in snow falling/blowing across the front of the vehicle does not appreciate the snow being brightly lit right in front of the grill and windshield. In this case the fogs are also on a relay that gets the switching power from the low beam. Simple matter to clip that wire and add a jumper from the parking lights. Now they work any time the parking lights are on, which is alone or with both headlight beams.

[Ronnie]

GM trucks like mine are the same way. Pull back and hold the dimmer switch and both high and low beams stay on. Look at a wiring diagram in the repair manual or do some checking online. You might be able to do what I did by simply adding jumper to the circuit.