After my successful conversion to the quad round headlight setup, I briefly toyed with the idea of sticking with the sealed beams that came along with the headlight mounting buckets. However, especially after one of the high/low light's high beam stopped working, I decided to order Cibie 5.75"s to replace the high/low beams on both sides.



It was worth it.

I took the car out for a drive tonight, and the beam pattern is incredible. The cutoff is extremely sharp, and no light is being cast into oncoming drivers' eyes. The light on the road is equal throughout, with no hot spots or gaps in the illumination. The angle up to the right is well-defined, even in the picture above, taken with a cell phone camera.

I've still got the sealed high beams, but I'm going to keep my eyes open for replacement H1s. I'd like to take the earlier suggestion of getting the amber Cibie highs, but I get the feeling they are rarer than a cheap set of the clear Cibies. Even though what I've currently got is the cheap DOT stuff, with the consistent lighting of the Cibie high/lows I can see much better than I could with the 9004 highs. The difference on both low and high beams is incredible.

The purpose of this post is to validate further the claims of improvement after a switch to E-codes. If you're driving around with the Aero plastic headlights, I feel very sorry for you, and I encourage you to examine alternatives. From what I understand, the glass Euro lights that fit in the '86-'93 models aren't bad, and I can personally vouch for 5.75" beams. You only need to look at the above picture to see why.
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'89 244 GL -- 108,600 miles (see profile for info on car)