- We're standing 50 yards away
from a hard 90 degree turn,
with a sheer cliff face on the other side.
(eerie growing sound)
Now my headlights are on
and I can't see the turn at all.
Like at all.
This is one of my favorite roads to drive,
but it keeps trying to kill me.
'Cause I keep almost driving off the edge.
'Cause my dang headlights are so bad.
So what do I do?
On a road like that and really on any road?
I need to be able to see way further ahead
than that to be safe.
And as the Miata keeps getting faster,
I need to be able to see even further ahead.
So these 1994 headlights just aren't cutting it anymore.
That's why today we're gonna install
a new set of headlights with some new wiring,
and then we'll go back to that Canyon road
and see just how much earlier I can see that turn.
I'm Zach and this is Money Pit.
Let there be light.
(cool catchy music)
- You ever think dang, I wanna do some cool stuff,
but I don't have the right hat?
Boom, problem solved.
Introducing the first official Kentucky Cobra hat.
Perfect for doing anything in.
Perfect for doing stuff like this.
(explosion sound) (squeaking sound)
Perfect for climbing ladders.
(rock guitar music playing)
Perfect for shredding.
Perfect for chilling on the couch with your boo.
She's in the bathroom.
- I've been waiting so long for these to come out.
We've been working on 'em for a while and I'm really,
really, really stoked on how they turned out.
High quality embroidery on the front.
That's the new official Kentucky Cobra logo.
Donut hit in the back.
Also embroidered mesh back.
I love the fit, it's my new favorite hat.
I can't wait to see you guys wearing them.
Post pictures on Instagram, tag me in them.
I will repost.
(upbeat music)
That's how you're gonna look when you buy one.
(electronic beep)
(smooth music)
- All right, so here's the deal.
Me, I'm a little bit of a grandpa.
You see, I like the way these headlights look.
I like how 1994 they are.
The problem is they're just not very good at their job.
Currently I can only see about 10 Miata lengths ahead of me.
And that's just not enough.
But the problem is I don't wanna add 10 LED ,
twin projector, dual HID,
crazy headlights to the front of this thing.
I just don't think it fits the car.
I wanna keep them how they look,
but I need them to be better at their job.
I need to be able to see
at least 20 Miata lengths ahead of me.
Can we double our light output?
Maybe?
I think so.
- [Eddie] You think double?
- Well, so here's the deal.
These low beams, 35 Watts.
Our new bulbs, low beams, 80 Watts.
That's over double the power baby.
- [Eddy] Literally.
- That is, yeah, literally over double the power.
So I'm hoping that we can double our light output.
- [Eddy] I guess we'll see.
- That's right.
(smooth music)
This might be one of the only tools I need today.
That can't be true.
- [Eddie] Impossible.
- All right, so before we can go making any sweet
and awesome lighting upgrades,
we got to get the old stock stuff out.
(relaxing music)
Ooh.
Kind of looks like Terminator.
Like after his face has been like all burnt off, you know.
These are some old school headlights.
This is how it was back in the day.
Like headlights were like one of six shapes basically,
circles of a different size
or rectangles of a different size.
And you just replaced the entire headlight,
anytime a bulb went out.
The bulb is the headlight.
You'll see what I mean.
And that's it.
I mean, these things are like five or six bucks.
And you just replace the whole thing, anytime they go out.
At 12 volts, it pulls 65 and 35 Watts.
That's the high beam and the low beam rating.
So the low beams are 35 Watts with these bulbs
and the high beams are 65.
But when I say Watt,
what do I even mean by that?
I mean, we all know that it's like
how light bulbs are rated,
but what is it?
Well, a Watt is just a measurement of power,
of electrical power.
It's just like horsepower.
In fact, you can directly convert Watts to horsepower.
I think there's 746 Watts per horsepower.
So actually, let's see here.
What would make 120 horsepower times 746 Watts?
A Miata makes 89,520 Watts of power.
Whoa.
That's pretty sick.
So we're also gonna do some wiring today.
We're gonna wire up some big fat wires, some relays.
Oh, it's gonna be great.
And we're converting from these old sealed beam bulbs
to a similar looking bulb
that actually allows us to swap out regular bulbs
so that it's not just this.
Let's go take a look at what we've got.
(upbeat music)
Here are our headlight housings.
Looks a little updated,
but doesn't look too fancy, not too flashy,
but the big trick to these things is
that they let us install a regular H4 bulb.
Because of these I was able
to get these HELLA high wattage, 80 watt,
low beam, hundred watt high beam bulbs.
These puppies are gonna pull down some power.
But to be able to use these,
I need the headlight conversions.
And I also need some chunkier wiring.
HELLA also makes this really nice, really easy to install,
I think, wiring harness, that should be just a,
just a treat to install and make these headlights
as powerful as they're intended to be
without melting down any of the stock wiring
or anything like that.
Trying to keep this Miata, not on fire.
So everything seems great.
Now let's see if everything I said is true
and this install goes as smoothly
as I'm hoping it's gonna.
What up ogre?
All right, so we're about ready to install our harness
and it's gonna be pretty easy.
It's pretty much plug and play.
Basically the stock headlights,
those sealed beams use an H4 base,
which looks just like this.
So this is gonna plug into our stock headlight harness,
and it's gonna use that to trigger our relays.
So when we turn on our headlights,
it'll power up the small side of our relay,
which is a small little electromagnet.
We send power to it,
that electromagnet causes a little magnetic field
and it forces a switch to flip.
That switch that flips, is the switch
that'll power up our actual new headlights.
So our stock headlight circuit
is just gonna operate the small side of the relay,
just gonna power up that little magnet.
So the larger side of the relay,
the side that actually powers up our headlights
is gonna take power through these two wires right here.
So I'll put these to 12 volts
probably down on the alternator.
And then we've got a ground,
two wires right here and here, no big deal.
It should be honestly quite easy.
(upbeat drumming music)
Gorgeous.
All right, so now we've got to get power
to the circuit and we get a ground to the circuit.
And get these things, you know,
up to the headlight areas.
So I'm just looking for a good spot to ground.
We've got two grounds and we need to find a one
at each headlight connector.
So I'm probably gonna try and get it over in here
and just go right here on the side.
I think that'll be pretty good.
Okay, so this is ready to plug into this.
So here's our stock connector, the original one,
and this should plug right in, heeha baby.
We can tuck that back in there.
Now this side's ready for our new headlight
and a bulb, sweet.
Now I just got to do the same to the other side,
route the wires over there and we're in business.
(upbeat drumming music)
So last think we got to do is install our harness.
It's pretty much installed.
It's physically in place,
but now we just need to get 12 volts
so we can actually turn on the headlights.
So I'm gonna put this down in the same place
where we powered our fan from,
from the terminal on top of the alternator.
(upbeat drumming music)
We've got the wiring harness powered up.
So we're ready to actually put in our headlights now.
Now you wanna be careful not to touch the glass
as these bulbs get really hot.
And the grease from your fingers can like get super,
extra hot and blow the bulb apart.
Okay, that was easy.
Yeah, not bad.
All right, okay.
Oh, we don't wanna forget a dust boot.
It's especially important 'cause the Miata has flip ups.
So the headlights spend a lot of time upside down like this.
So I don't have a dust boot.
All right, plug this puppy in.
(relaxing music)
All right, well, it needs wiped down,
but she's in there.
Now let's do the other side.
(relaxing music)
Nice.
All right, so now it's time to see if all my hard,
hard work has been worth it.
Or if my nighttime driving just gotten more dangerous.
Hey, they work.
Let there be light indeed.
(relaxing music)
Whoa.
That's bright.
All right, sweet, the headlights work.
We did it, and it wasn't that hard.
How about that?
Now, the next thing we need to do, is align them.
So we really need to wait for the sun to go down.
'Cause it's kind of hard to do during the day.
So we'll wait for the sun to go down.
Then we'll go align these things.
(electronic beep)
Also, if you guys want these old headlights,
I just took out.
I am gonna give them away along with a $100 gift card
randomly to one of you guys.
I don't really know what you'll do with them.
I dunno, turn 'em into a flashlight.
Break my heart, throw them away, keep the gift card.
But I'll put a link in the description
and leave it open until next week.
So you got a week.
It's a hundred dollar gift card, two headlights.
(electronic beep)
(relaxing music)
Okay, night has finally fallen
so we can align our headlights.
So we're gonna mark some spots up on the wall,
up there real quick.
We're gonna drive up,
get our nose real close to the wall.
Mark where our headlights are at.
Mark what we want to aim for, get...
- [Eddie] Wait, we're about to get kicked out.
- Oh yeah, yeah, it looks like it.
How's it going? - You good?
Yeah, yeah, I'm just measuring my headlights
if you don't mind. - Okay, okay cool.
- Yeah, yeah. - Almost like,
are they tagging on the wall? (laughing)
- No man. - Thanks.
Just aligning headlights, thanks.
- [Eddie] Bro, you were like to cool.
You were so calm man.
- Dude, I told him I was like, I'm not leaving.
I was like, not going anywhere.
You find somebody else.
All right, where was I?
And then we'll back the car up, make our adjustments.
And that should be about it.
Okay, now we're gonna keep the car running so that,
you know, the battery doesn't die.
And when we look at the wall,
we can see already that our headlights
are aimed a little bit high.
So we're gonna start by dropping them down
and then we'll center them up a little bit,
but it's clearly a good thing we're aligning them.
All right, so there are just two adjustment screws
on each of these headlights.
There's one at the bottom
that controls the up and down tilt.
And there's one on the side
that controls the left and right aim of the headlight.
So we're gonna start by adjusting the bottom.
It's gonna screw it in and we should see
that headlight on the wall start to drop down.
So we're just looking to touch the bottom of the tape
with the cutoff of the light.
The cutoff being the line from where it goes
from bright to dark again.
So you can see,
we're just touching the bottom of the piece of tape.
So in terms of height,
that headlight is pretty well aligned now.
So I'm gonna go do the other one.
(relaxing music)
Okay, so that height looks pretty good.
Now I'm gonna mess with the left and right
just a little bit like on this passenger side one.
I wanna bring it in a little bit more
to come a little closer to hitting our X
where the center of the headlight was.
I'm okay with it pointing off to the right a little bit.
Helps light up the side of the road, possible pedestrians,
you know, curves on roads.
So I'm okay with it hanging off to the right a touch,
but I'm gonna, I'm gonna center it up a little.
(relaxing music)
Okay, now let's look at the driver's side headlight again,
in terms of the left and right alignment.
This one looks pretty good.
Probably, I'm just not even gonna mess with it.
Left and right, that looks fine to me.
So we're gonna call this good.
Now I will say for some cars,
there are certain specs for this
and you can't do all cars
just up against a wall like this.
You can get away with most, but with some cars,
there are specific specs
that you're gonna wanna look up.
But for a car like the Miata,
this kind of method is fine.
And honestly, I'm just gonna keep a screwdriver in the car
for about a week and make any tweaks
if I feel like they need to be made.
All right, so now that our headlights are all aligned,
let's check our super scientific light measurement
and see how many Miata's ahead of me I can see, now.
- [Eddie] Some of the drones.
(bubbles popping)
(cheering)
(upbeat music)
- And we're back on one of my favorite driving roads
to see whether or not I can see
one of the most dangerous corners
with my new, brighter headlights.
We're gonna point this thing
at the same corner we did last time
and see whether or not we can see it any better.
Let's go point these lights.
(upbeat music)
All right, so we are at the bottom
of one of my favorite Canyon roads
and we made it, because I can see.
These new headlights are fantastic.
It's like a huge box of light
just getting flooded all over the road.
It's honestly amazing.
I can see both edges of the road.
I can see the lines on the road.
I can see what's coming.
And that's only with the low beams
when you flick the high beams.
Oh my God, it's amazing.
It's it's made this car is so much better to drive at night.
So I'm gonna go hit this road again a few times
and I'll see you guys next week.
Thank you so much for watching, we really appreciate it.
Don't forget to follow me on Instagram @zachjobe.
Follow Donut @donutmedia.
And I'll see you cool cats, next week.
(upbeat music)