International Lancia Forums

The power of the normal headlights for the Thema (Tipo 1) are to my mind unsatisfactory. I am thinking of converting them into Xenon lights. As I am no technician at all, is this a simple change of the bulb?? Or do I need to replace a complete set of lamps etc.??

Regards

I can't say anything else than that I'm very satisfied with the lights on my 88 thema. Have you tried 85/100w bulbs?

Christian

I am using 90/100 bulbs with bluish tint - the plastic sockets plugging into the bulbs melt because of the greated heat generated. You probably want to add a wire harness with proper relays if you want to avoid this problem!

I ran my Thema series 1 for five years and never had any trouble seeing where I was going, maybe a trip to the optician is in order?

Thanks

hello,
as far as I know there are no (real) Xenon-Lights for Lancia Thema available.
Maybe you have seen "pseudo-Xenon-lights" where only the bulbs are changed.
These are bulbs with blue/white light that is similar to the XenonLight but
technically its not a Xenon Light (Real Xenon Lights often cost more than 400
Euro)
Anyway, the Xenon-similar-Light-bulbs are easy to change -like the normal ones-
cost between 5-25 euro/pair. (for example narva, phillips blue vision, osram)
and give you the light-feeling of a white light similar to the Xenon ones.
The producers say that these bulbs not only have "aesthetic" function but
increase the field of the road you see from 100% to 120-130%.

Well, as i have seen in different german tests, practically this advantage is
overvaluated: the gain of lightness was only +10%.
Some very cheap bulbs even had worse results than the normal bulbs,
because the blue shadow even decreased the power of lightness they had.

Last but not least there is the possibility to use stronger bulbs of 85/100w
instead 50/55/65w
I think that will surely give better results, but i am afraid that there could be
problems with other cars (too much light for cars coming the other direction)
and these strong bulbs are forbidden in Germany (and EU ?)

- let your lights been tested for correct height
- clean the lights (regularly)
- try a pair of strong lights (85/100w) or Xenon-similar lights (f.e.phillips blue vision)
- well,if nothing helps, really go to the optician

Yours,happy new year
Dakis

(dakis@web.de) http://fortunecity.de/hockenheim/ferrar ... nzade.html

Never increase the wattage of the bulbs on the front headlamps as they will very soon ( days / weeks) melt the wiring in the switch at the steering wheel or the contact in the switch or burn out the ignition switch block, i know i tried it!!!