headlights, heaters

[Joe Elliott <jee@domain.elided>]

   As for headlights, I strongly recommend that everyone driving an 
older car in the USA fit appropriate headlights.  I don't care what 
the law says, it's all BS--get the headlights that your car was meant 
to have.  IT'S WELL WORTH THE MONEY.  Anyway, in response to 
someone's question about the various headlight manufacturers, I use 
Carello outboard and Cibie inboard lights on my GTV6 (5.75") because 
that's what was available on eBay at the time.  New flat-face Hellas 
would have been cheaper, but I wanted convex-face lamps on the GTV6. 
(I've subsequently seen the Hellas on Bernie's GTV6 and realized they 
don't look bad at all.)  My pal Nattie has those Hellas on his BMW 
(also 5.75") and they're great. Here's my analysis (without ever 
having parked the cars back-to-back on a deserted road at night): 
Low beam performance between Hella and Carello is identical--I 
imagine Cibie and Marchal would be as well.  High beam performance 
between Hella and Cibie: Both very bright and fairly incredible when 
you think that only 55W are being consumed by each bulb.  The Hellas 
just light up the road bigtime, whereas the Cibie units do so in a 
very focused, pencil-beam sort of way.  The Cibie lights, by the way, 
come in convex or flat-lens versions, I have the convex ones. 
Another asthetic note: the convex Cibie lights are more curved than 
the Carello ones.  I like the way this worked out on my GTV6, but if 
I mixed those brands the other way around it might not be so pretty. 
The flat-face Hellas are available for $44 I think (if you buy them 
in a pair) from http://catalog.com/susq/.  The Cibie lights are 
available in flat or convex versions, for slightly more money, from 
http://www.talbotco.com.  The latter site also carries Euro lights 
for the 164, as do several enterprising digesters who can also get 
you proper lights for your Milano.  Needless to say, both sites 
mentioned above also sell 7" round lights for Spiders, etc as well as 
replacements for both sizes of rectangular fake headlights.

   As for heaters that only work on High--my friend Jake's Milano had 
this problem, and it turned out to be the resistor set that governs 
the fan speed.  It was a bitch to replace, but we got the part from 
APE for $15, and it might have been even cheaper except that APE has 
a minimum order of $15.

Joe Elliott
[temporarily back in Oxford, OH, where dad says a ratty GTV6 appeared 
in a driveway on the west side of town recently--first GTV6 sighting 
(other than mine) in Oxford since 1997.]

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