Daniel J. Stern wrote:

> On Thu, 23 Dec 2004, I love Edsels wrote:
>
>
>>I have a 97 Ford Ranger and don't like the headlights. I've been told
>>that replacing them w/ lights 01 or newer will make a big difference.
>>Do they just bolt right into place like the existing ones? Or do I
>>need to make some alterations?
>>TIA
>>Tom
>>Seattle
>
>
> They will bolt in. You must use the newer headlamps *and* the newer corner
> lights. The park/turn function is located within the main headlamp body on
> the newer lamps, not in the corner lamp as with the old lamps. Therefore,
> there is a separate sidemarker bulb in the new-style corner lamp. This
> must be wired in, which is not difficult to do. You can either wire it to
> burn steadily whenever the parking or headlamps are on (one wire to
> parking lamp feed, one wire to ground) or you can do the smart thing and
> wire it to burn steadily when the parking or headlamps are on *and* flash
> with the turn signals (one wire to parking lamp feed, one wire to turn
> signal feed, diagram at
> http://www.danielsternlighting.com/t...rkerflash.html )
>
> Ford's marginal headlamp wiring has been starving bulbs and producing dim,
> brownish light from the headlamps for several decades now. They've finally
> (in the last three years or so) started equipping their cars with decent
> optics, and that's a big improvement over the badly-focused beams produced
> by virtually all pre-'01 Fords, but the too-thin wires still starve the
> bulbs. Put relays in, see
> http://www.danielsternlighting.com/t...ys/relays.html
>
> DS

I've been driving my friend's late 80's F-150 all week, and working
nights as well (note timestamp) and I have to say that IMHO the
headlights are pretty darn good as far as seeing where I'm going, at
least on high beam. Of course, they're the same headlights that I hate
to have behind me at night when I'm in my regular ride, as the rear
window turns into this big wash of white light.

nate

!Peeve: got a call from the shop I dumped my Porsche at, they managed to
get rid of the hideous rattling noise from my A/C just by replacing a
few broken bolts. (apparently the bolts that hold all the accessories
on tend to back out and subsequently break. You'd have thunk that after
all these years of using bolts they would have figured out how to keep
this from happening, but according to the mechanic, it's actually fairly
common on the 944 series.)

Peeve: the fact that I didn't find this myself.

?Peeve: they were unable to reproduce the dying-CV-esque noise that
originally prompted me to drop it off at the shop with a side note "oh,
by the way, see if you can fix my A/C..."

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