Morris Minor Owners Club

Sealed units or ones that can have h4 bulbs

Which is best as I want to keep originality and my sealed unit dipped beam has blown

I noticed my other unit has a h4 bulbs Which is in it but didn’t notice any difference in brightness between the two.

Sealed units when they blow I know you have to replace the whole thing and the bulbs you can replace to other types of bulbs but is there any wiring involved.

How long do the sealed units last now as you can buy them new from certain suppliers .

I don’t want to fit led headlights but as they may be more efficient but this is too modern for my car in my opinion.

My 1969 had sealed beam headlights. I was always very unimpressed with them even back in 1989 when I first got the Minor and long before more modern cars had super bright headlights.

As part of the car's restoration I changed the sealed beams for halogen units. Wipac Quadoptic reflectors which are British and very high quality. You can also get "Lucas" halogen units if you want a bit more originality because they do say Lucas on the glass. Make sure you buy the correct dip for either RHD or LHD.

Fitting a halogen unit means you have a much wider choice of bulbs. There are absolutely loads of H4 bulbs that claim to be brighter than standard and the choice is yours.

There is no wiring to do, the connector block is the same for sealed beam and H4. The reflector unit just goes in place of the sealed beam unit. It's extremely simple. The halogen units are just like a sealed beam unit but you can change the bulb,

Halogen H4 are a bit better than sealed beam I think but it depends a lot on the bulb. High quality expensive LED H4 are even better still but I note you don't want to use those. At car shows my headlights are never switched on so nobody ever notices I have LED headlight bulbs except me when I drive at night!

There are some other important considerations regarding headlight brightness regardless of the type of bulb. Dirty contacts or worn out switches for the lighting switch and dip switch can seriously dim the lights. Bad earths on the inner wing cause dim lights and flickering. Sorting these out can make a big difference.


Stephen