240 Headlight Recommendations

I have a 1985 Volvo 240 and am in need of new headlights. Can anyone recommend headlights that are a bit brighter than stock?

Depends on the head light type already in your 240.

An 85 if stock is dual rectangles. You can buy H4 housings and use more powerful bulbs. The Cibie ones are probably the best but Hella H4 have been good as well. Then you buy a H4 dual headlight aux wiring harness like they sell on Summit or wagonmeister. Now you can use 85w or even 100w low and high beams. This on the outer ones. For the inner ones if you want to upgrade you can get H1 housings. But I've found that I am happy wiht stock high beam replacements there. With the wiring harness it is all brighter.

You will have to change a couple of wires in the headlight connector to trigger the high and low function properly. But they just use an extractor tool to move the terminals. The aux harness will trigger high and low beam from your original headlight wiring.

@lummert: The car has these square, sealed headlights.


@dl242gt: Are there brighter headlights that do not require modifying the wiring harness?

Well you can add the led bulbs. I tried them on my cars and found that the cheap ones are just that. They made a huge amount of light. Sadly it was unfocused and had tons of glare. I couldnt' stand them and went back to halogen bulbs. They are very affordable for high power halogen. Narva, Osram/phiiips, and hella all have cheap good quality halogens.

If you do go led. You have to step up and buy the high quality ones from a maker like philips. That would probably be a good product. But it was cheaper and easy to me to upgrade the harness and go with halogen. Plus it takes a big current load off the old wiring in your car.

dl242gt said:

Well you can add the led bulbs. I tried them on my cars and found that the cheap ones are just that. They made a huge amount of light. Sadly it was unfocused and had tons of glare. I couldnt' stand them and went back to halogen bulbs. They are very affordable for high power halogen. Narva, Osram/phiiips, and hella all have cheap good quality halogens.

If you do go led. You have to step up and buy the high quality ones from a maker like philips. That would probably be a good product. But it was cheaper and easy to me to upgrade the harness and go with halogen. Plus it takes a big current load off the old wiring in your car.

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Thank you for the info.

I found some info regarding adding a relay to the headlight circuit on Dave Bartons website. That looks pretty straight forward.
I have been looking at some bulb options and came across these LEDs. The LEDs are 250w, and I was only able to find 50w-60w halogen bulbs. Do you think the LED bulbs at the link seem like they would be high enough quality to be ok?

Those leds are the type that I did not like using. That wattage alone if they are accurate (probably not accurate) will need a heavy duty wiring harness upgrade. Even the most powerful H4 halogen bulbs are only 130w. They are cheap and very bright. But that's all they are. The super bright white light doesn't really help illuminate anything without tons of glare and washout. Your results may be better. But I'm not on board.

dl242gt said:

Those leds are the type that I did not like using. That wattage alone if they are accurate (probably not accurate) will need a heavy duty wiring harness upgrade. Even the most powerful H4 halogen bulbs are only 130w. They are cheap and very bright. But that's all they are. The super bright white light doesn't really help illuminate anything without tons of glare and washout. Your results may be better. But I'm not on board.

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I just ordered some halogen bulbs made by Philips, and the wiring parts. Thank you for your help!