Litronic (Xenon) beam effectiveness...
 

Does this look right to you guys with Litronic or HID conversions? I never really thought too much about it until I visited a relative, and drove their Benz with factory xenons, and noticed their beams seem to throw much more light (more intense and wider). Just seemed so much better than the Litronics in my Boxster. I checked aim recently, and they seem to be height aimed correctly 25 feet from wall, although I didn't try to adjust the left/right throw. The original D2S xenon bulbs from 15 yrs ago are still in the headlamps. Never changed them cause they are still burning...do they get dimmer with age? Or do I need to adjust the left/right positioning as well? Was told to stay away from this adjustment as it's not easy to do?... Or am I just imagining things and the below throw looks ok?

http://i869.photobucket.com/albums/a...ps67wfrvoo.jpg

That looks pretty normal to me, left light is always dimmer to not blind oncoming. Litronics are good lights and shine very bright and far but it is a rather focused beam, our cars are so low to the ground they are frequently blocked before they reach the horizon, hit a bump and tilt the nose up and you'll see the lights light up a tree a mile away.

To better deal with this just use the high beams.

Litronics are great and overall shine very bright. Plus.... they're pretty.

http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/2016...406a844fb2.jpg

I do not have Litronics, so I cannot comment on that. But it is worth noting if you 986 did not come from the factory with Litronics they will not self level (unless you wired in the harness), which could account for the difference you are noticing. Also, I think some newer headlights on luxury cars move left/right based on your steering.

Nice shot! Thx, guess I'll just leave the adjustment as is then. Just thought the other car I drove had way better illumination (it was an E series Merc). Maybe cause it sits higher, but I could swear they're much brighter too. Oh well.

Thanks, mine don't self level as I got mine shortly after I bought my car from a friend who had the same car as me and let me swap out my halogens for his Litronics prior to him trading in for another. I never bothered to install the electronics, and instead just aimed the beams as required. Does self level also raise the beam higher whenever the car dips on hilly roads?

^ Your friend was extremely nice, I would love to get a free set of Litronics.

My understanding is that the self leveling does two things. The low beam will tilt up into the high beam when the high beam is activated, and the car will compensate up or down when accelerating or decelerating. I think the retrofit wiring will add the high beam tilt, I am not sure it it adds the compensation.

Got it. Ok, thanks. Then I guess that it could help a little if I install the electronics. And yeah, it was very nice of him. :)

Unfortunately, Litronics are old. Permanent cutoff that blocks half the beam, halogen high beams, diffusing lenses (fuzzy output, not sharp) and old bulbs with discolored/blued reflectors from more than a decade of HID heat.

I did a side by side comparison with aftermarket HIDs, Litronics and Mazda CX-5 HIDs and the results were not good for the Lits...only slightly better than new halogens. :(
I also installed a set of Fred's projectors into a set of Lits and the results were stunning in both aesthetics and functionality (looks amazing, superior light output over the Lits, and the self leveling feature).

I think you're right. The light output is fuzzy and not fully focused and sharp like the newer HID setups which are amazingly bright. Our previous SUV was an 05 Infiniti FX35, which comes standard with Xenons, and even those were just like my Litronics. Not sharp and bright like the newer ones. Oh well.

And hey, while I'm on the subject of xenon lighting, why is it that with premium Japanese cars, they give you xenon lighting standard (eg. our 05 FX came standard with it) while Porsches, Audi (until just recently), BMWs, etc. come with halogens, and then you have to pay out the wazoo for a lighting package to get the xenons?! We replaced the FX with a 12 ML350, and it came with yep....halogens. :(

Because Ze Germans like to $50 and $100 you for options. ;)

Hell, my '07 Volkswagen GTI had standard bi-xenons. They made them optional on the next generation though. For the past few years I've thought Porsche had standard no-xenon and went up from there though I'm probably wrong.

Hello,

if you're Litronics are not self adjusting, they don't work correctly. So hahaha - funny you wonder why your headlights are bad. :D

I've replaced all bulbs and the D2S in my stock OEM Litronics lately. And yes, that makes a difference. I did use good quality bulbs from Osram. But nothing fancy.

Don't compare modern LED OEM headlamp systems like 2017 Audis and Mercedes have with a 15 year old Porsche Litronic. The new ones are better. But i don't like them, because they tend to glare me when other cars have them and i drive at night.

Regards, Markus

They are working correctly. They don't have the feature of self leveling because I chose not to wire in the electronics, but they still are set to whatever beam aim I set it at, and don't move from that height, so it just doesn't dip up when I go downhill or dip down a little when I go uphill, which is the same as what the OEM xenons do in my previous FX35. Self leveling is just an additional nice feature of the OEM lights, but not absolutely necessary and I still can see a long way with the Litronics. They also don't tilt upwards a bit when I turn on the highbeams, but I don't think that is necessary either because the halogen high beams alone are just fine. The only thing is that the newer Xenons today are much brighter and more focused than what I see in the Litronics and in our 05 FX35.

Yes! It's embarrassing when a $60K plus vehicle comes with those darned halogens! You see folks in the street driving in their new BMWs with those ugly halogens and then a Toyota Corolla pulls along with LED headlamps! :p

I'm sorry, but you are wrong.

1. they are self leveling - they get the signal from the sensors in the front and rear left. That way they adjust if you have luggage / weight in front and / or back. Nothing to do with up or downhill.
2. the xenon unit doesn't move up and down if you use high beam and don't have the sensors connected.

Regards, Markus

Some clarification:

-Only the cars with factory equipped Lits have self leveling; retrofitting this feature to post delivery Lit installations requires making up the wiring loom, adding the controller, front, and rear sensors, and reprogramming the DME (factory lit cars are actually capable of throwing fault codes for the lights).

-Both factory and post delivery installed Lits are capable of having the Xenon lamp rotate up to fill in the high beams if you have the controller installed and correctly wired into the headlight loom.

Yes.... please see below for my responses...

Sadly, self-leveling will not make them any brighter/sharper.

Agree. I don't think self leveling would do a darned thing about making them brighter/sharper. Maybe new bulbs will help a little, but I'm doubtful there too. Thanks for the info before...I think that is spot on.

Thanks JFP. I personally didn't feel the wiring/controller retrofit was necessary since self level wasn't important to me, as well as the swivel up help from the low beam to high beam, but others I'm sure do. The lights are good, but not great. So be it. I notice that the newer LED headlights on the Acuras are darned bright too, but they seem to glare on oncoming cars.

Actually, it does just that when the system raises the low beam unit when high beams are activated.

As for leveling, it's German (EU) law that HID systems be self leveling. Washing is required, as well ... and if you wash them they will be brighter than when dirty!:D

The best effect of self leveling I have seen is under hard braking the lights stay forward which is noticeable.

These are no high tech swivel steer bixenons or anything but they're sufficient if set up correctly and don't blind other in oncoming.

It will make your high beams seem brighter, but light output will not change. Litronics have a fixed cutoff shield that always blocks half of the beam, unlike bi-xenons.

No, self leveling will not make them any brighter or sharper, it just makes it look that way. Pointing a flashlight slighter higher doesn't make it any brighter, but merely changes the path of the beam/coverage area. ;)

Right, but I am concerned about the low beam only. I don't live in the EU, so the 2nd point doesn't apply except for the part about the dirty lenses, but I keep the car clean normally, so that shouldn't be a problem.

Wow, this topic has almost turned into an oil thread! :)

While you may not live in the EU the cars are built to comply with the law to begin with. That's why we all have washer jets on our litronics (which To my best knowledge is entirely useless lol)

Lol. I don't have the useless washer jets so I just installed the clear corner piece instead...
http://i869.photobucket.com/albums/a...psvvl1b8ey.jpg

New bulbs may help, just don't pay the Porsche tax. :)
There are alternatives that do the same job with the same light output. I've found the biggest issue with 10+ year old Lits to be discoloration and deterioration of the reflectors reflective finish. Not a lot can be done about that.

Thanks, I may be screwed either way cause I stupidly bought an extra set of xenon bulbs way way back when they were like over $100 per bulb. Not sure what I was thinking. Didn't know the first set were gonna last this long. I'm amazed actually cause I use them quite often (even when I drive in the daytime so that others see me). Thing is, the bulbs I think are only like $40 for one now. Lol.

Not sure how my reflectors are...they seem ok, but who knows...

Not so....try travelling down a dark country road at speed with the high beams on and then fire the washers. It's like St Elmo's fire ......magical

I'll have to try it, what makes them go off? Use the window washers but have the headlights on at the time?

Hm, i have stock Litronics. They adjust when i start the car. And they are really good.

I had another 986 for cleaning the front radiators. The Litronics in that car were OEM but retrofitted with all sensors. I recognized that the light was by far not as good as in my car. When removing the front bumper and headlamps i recognized that they had used after market connectors for the Litronic mechanism, that could easily fall of the housing. When putting back together everything i fixed that with Gaffa tape, so the plugs can't get off. Now the Litronics adjusted themselves. Low beam and high beam light was much better.

Conclusion: the Litronics are in correct position for driving if they don't adjust themselves. Also you can't adjust manually them from the outside.

Regards, Markus

With factory Litronics or any other factory HID set up, when you turn them on, the beams swivel up and level to a set position (yes, you can still adjust the vertical and lateral position of the beams through the trunk). My guess is that since that car you were working on was retrofitted with aftermarket connectors, and that they were disconnecting, that they were then not lifting up the beam upon startup like they should, and therefore, the lighting aim would of course be off. In contrast, in my set up, since I don't have the electronics installed, the projectors will not move at all during startup or shut down, and therefore, they stay in the fixed position at all times. Therefore, all I have to do is to properly aim my projectors (through the front trunk openings as stated in the manual), to get at the desired height level, and then the projectors will stay at this fixed position at all times. Therefore, I would never have the problem of the beams not leveling up to the right height because they are already fixed in the right height. Therefore, your example here is not applicable. My beams are set at the right height...it's just that they don't ever move from what I set it at to account for weight changes in the car or a swivel up of the xenons to help the halogens upon high beam application.

As I discovered, when I turned on my friend's car with the factory Litronics, the beam would swivel up upon startup and then swivel down upon shut down. So, after I installed his lights into my car without the electronics, the beam would be too low because I didn't have the electronics in my car to make the projectors level up. Therefore, to get around this, I had to manually adjust the beams up to the correct height, and then they stayed there at that level at all times. Now when I turn on the headlamps, they are at that same height all the time, and when I turn the lights off, the projectors also don't move so that when I turn them back on, they are still at that fixed height. And regardless of what car the headlamps were in, they still are not as good as the modern set ups. :)

Oh, and you definitely can adjust the aim of Litronics. It's covered in the owner's manual. There are 2 holes that are plugged inside each side of the trunk (behind the carpet). One changes the height of the beam, the other changes the lateral positioning. That's how I moved the beam of my Litronics up.

http://www.renntech.org/forums/topic/518-how-to-adjust-aim-of-litronics/