Headlights

[Tony Griffiths]

Here are the pictures sent. They look like R47s.

[Stuart Joseph]

Good morning. More useful would be photos of the reflectors.

[A G Wood]

@ Vancevr:

The numbers on the globe bases I understand to be  their individual ANSI codes.

According to https://www.bulbtown.com/default.asp: 

1129  =  Miniature Bulb Ba15s Base - 6.4 Volt 2.63 Amp 16.832 Watt S8 Single Contact Bayonet (Ba15S) Base, 21 MSCP C-6 Filament Design. 2.0" (50.8mm) Maximum Overall Length, 1.04" (26.5mm) Maximum Outer Diameter. 1.12" (28.50mm) Light Center Length (L.C.L.). 200 Average Rated Hours.

 63 = Miniature Bulb Ba15S Base - 7.0 Volt .63 Amp 4.41 Watt G6 Ba15S Base, 1,000 Hour

Note that #63 is a 7v rated globe which I believe was specified thus to deliberately be under-run giving an extended service life for mandatory lighting such as position (aka side & tail) lighting. Nowadays a regular 6v globe would be entirely suitable.

[Stuart Joseph]

Good morning. More useful would be photos of the reflectors.

Given the valuable information from A G Wood I’m not surprised that your light output is poor. The 1139 is rated at 18 watts - I use these as brake or indicator lamps. A 36 watt bulb gives an adequate output but I would question the silvering of your reflectors plus that glass does seem too ‘stippled’ for good light output.

Stuart

---

Typo 1129 not 1139

[A G Wood]

[/quote]

Given the valuable information from A G Wood I’m not surprised that your light output is poor. The 1139 is rated at 18 watts - I use these as brake or indicator lamps. A 36 watt bulb gives an adequate output but I would question the silvering of your reflectors plus that glass does seem too ‘stippled’ for good light output.

Stuart

---

Stuart, I'm no expert on pre-war lighting on American cars, and I welcome any input from one, but I feel the #1129 globe may be original spec, even though its output is <18W.
Looking at the bulbtown data it also has '21MSCP' which I believe is the rating of the #1129 in candle-power
(as you most likely know there is no direct conversion from W to c.p.).
 Based on D W Moore's report at deepblue.lib.umich.edu. which I acknowledge as the source of my data:
21 c.p. globes would fit in well with pre-1940 US automotive lighting practice where there was a plethora of different systems and the only attempt at a standard was the requirement to fit only 8-5/32, 8-1/2, 9 and 9-1/2 inch headlamps with 21-candle-power globes. The two-beam system wasn't developed until ~1924/5, and by 1940/41 lighting was standardised  as 2 x 7 inch 'sealed beams'.
I would also suspect that OPs headlamps have no dipping mechanism either, as according to Moore, 'anti-dazzle' measures were a secondary concern in the US at that time, and some allowance (if an inspection was called for by local legislation) was even made to allow the beam to rise above the horizontal.

Anorak discussion aside, I do agree that 36W globes would do the job, and I know from my own experience with my own pre-war car that re-silvering makes a biiig difference. I believe that in the States reflectors can be aluminized as well which is more durable.
Regards
AGW

[Vancevr]

Wgen talking about re silvering do you mean polishing and buffing back to a mirror finish. The were looking a little hazy. I was going to anyways because they werent the best. Can I see a few pics of the correct lenses. Are the anything special?

[A G Wood]

I can't answer your question about the lenses, but I can tell you a bit about your reflectors.
What you have is a highly polished metal bowl (usually a brass alloy) which has been electrolytically plated with a very thin layer of silver.
Sometimes the surface is further coated with a sealer to delay deterioration. Eventually a silver oxide film forms on the surface due to the silver reacting with atmospheric pollutants and the surface stops reflecting. What I am trying to impart is, if you use any form of abrasive polish you stand a good chance of destroying what plating is left. 
Back in the Twenties when your car was new, the advice for a short-term fix was to use lampblack and a well worn silk handkerchief, to freshen up the surface, but I don't fancy your chances of finding either item now.
 One suggestion I have seen is to gently swab the reflective surface with a cotton wool swab soaked with a silver dip type product to chemically remove the oxide film, like this local product:

  shopping.png (Size: 7.94 KB / Downloads: 227)
I have never tried doing this myself.
The only permanent fix imo is to have the plating stripped, the bowls re-polished and re-plated
Its generally not overly expensive to have reflectors re-silvered, in this country it would usually be done by an electro-plating shop.
There is much discussion on various US 'antique auto' forums such as H.A.M.B  (Hokey Ass Message Board), for instance, on the subject of plating reflectors which explain the process, and suggest electro-platers who do this. 
The other thing is, all you can realistically achieve is to get your OE lights set up as good as they can possibly be (and be compliant  with whatever local motor vehicle lighting legislation you are subject to) so don't expect retina-searing performance

[squeak]

I have had headlight reflectors replated with aluminium by a company doing items for the coffin industry. Not easy to find a company willing to put special jobs in the production line, was cheaper and claimed to be more durable. Used in modern cars.

[A G Wood]

Yes, the H.A.M.B. forum mentions aluminizing (sic) as a better alternative to traditional silver plating. Also works on non-metal headlamp reflectors too of course, and there used to be a coffin furniture manufacturing firm here in NZ too that once did one-offs (but not any more).

 I actually had a bit of trouble finding anyone that would do the traditional silver-plate, its not the silver plating that's the issue so much; rather its the associated environmental toxicity involved with the parent chrome plating operation that makes it difficult to find one that's still in business.

If anyone is still interested in my USA 21 candle-power headlamp globe thesis, I later pulled out my book of 1925 electrical data sheets and yes, apart from a handful of outliers who specified 18 or 25 c.p. globes, every manufacturer from Apperson to Winton used  21 c.p. globes in their headlamps. Almost all had no dipped beams in the sense we understand it today, one dipped the reflectors like the Lucas dip-and-switch system (without the 'switch' so far as I can tell from the schematic), some inserted a power resistor in series, most that bothered look to have switched out the 21 c.p. globe and switched on a pair of 2 c.p. globes which could either be in separate lamps or inserted in, but off the focal point of the headlamp reflector. I suspect the latter is the reason for the OPs #63 globes being in the OP's pictures with headlamps.

[Vancevr]

Anything on the lens