Looking for brighter headlights for my 86. Which are good,and which are junk? Any suggestions?

 

Assuming your searching Amazon/Ebay and similar...

What's junk? (Disclaimer-the following is my opinion from experience)
OEM style sealed beam lights.
Just about everything listed online that uses a plastic housing.
Just about everything listed that has a "projector" lens.
Cheap HID's and LED's

What's good?
What I've found that works nicely in my car is a decent set of 4x6 glass lens housings that use the H4 bulbs(which will require the headlight plug to be repined, or an adaptor made for it)
A good quality HID kit
Headlight harness to pull power directly from the battery.
Proper aiming of the new headlight housings

After I did that, I still felt there was room for improvement. So I found some reflectors that go in with the bulb itself that forces the light to only shine upwards, which then hits the reflector in the housing and focuses more light downwards.

Again, that's what I ended up with and I'm fairly happy with it. Don't expect the same lighting performance as a new car, but you can certainly improve what you have now.

 

If you want something that just drops in try the silverstars, they are not HID like a new car but a big improvement over the stock ones that are terrible.

 

 

Measure the voltage at the bulb with the car at idle and the headlights on, it should be close to the same voltage as the stud on the alternator. If not it means you have a voltage drop, which is not uncommon, through all the wiring in the car which is at best 28 years old now. You can start by installing relays on your headlight circuits, this will bypass all the wiring and the resistive headlight switch in the car. Once you have proper voltage at the bulbs go with a nice set of JW Speaker LED headlights

 

I am thinking of trying these but which specific one are you speaking of?

These? https://www.autozone.com/collision-b...kId=3195121499

 

Sylvania H6054 SilverStar

I purchased mine at Advance and they were like $25 a piece but may have had a coupon. I still have these headlights on my GTA and have had no issues.

 

Or 4656 if you have a camaro
Silverstars are one of, if not the easiest way to improve your lighting.Simple P&P installation.
If your willing to do some work for an upgrade, then a HID retrofit is one of the better ways to achieve that.I did mine 10+ years ago and still on the same bulbs.

 

I bought Sylvania H4651 for the brights. According to Sylvania's website the 4651 or the 4656 will both work for the low beams. I can't figure out what the difference is between the two.

 

Low beam (4656) has a three prong socket, hi-beam (4651) has 2 prongs. Your lo-beam light works as a hi-beam when you switch to hi's, hence the 3rd prong, 1 grd, 1 lo, 1 hi.