Nice conversion
- Thread starter charles.y
- Start date
No, I think it looks awful as well. Sort of like a bad Fiat Coupe copy. I'm not a massive fan of any of the light conversions aesthetically, but it does free up space under the bonnet and save weight, and if you care about driving properly fast when you needs lights on I guess there's a benefit there as well. It doesn have to be done well if it's going to be done at all as it's the sort of mod that done badly makes the car a Barry Boys candidate.
Sort of. I quite fancy a set but, because the light units sit back from where the originals are, my air filter wouldn't fit. I agree that they don't look as good as the original (with the lights off) but I like the sound of the weight saving and - perhaps better still - it is something less to go wrong. The other thing against them is rectangular lights don't seem to work as well as round lights. They are also lower so don't give as good light coverage. While they will cause additional drag (not much of a concern bellow 100mph), if you are into serious night driving, a good set of originals (with IceShark wiring) are probably much better.
I haven't seen the underbonnet look of a car with such a conversion so I had assumed it would help. I had to take a cutting disk to the brace on the back of my passenger side light to fit my air filter in and I guess there might not be much to be gained over that configuration of pop-up, but there is space to be gained elsewhere by removing the motor and the bar across the front that lifts the pods (which I imagine is substantial and correspondingly heavy, give its purpose).
sawood12
New member
The current D9 kit uses rectangular lights as they are supposed to be replicas of the Carrera GT setup and not intended for pure track cars so are not as light as they could be. Also according to D9 there should still be room behind them for a cone air filter- however the twin projector light version they are currently working on wont give you enough room. I'm not decided on the look, though you cannot deny that the D9 kit looks great on Patricks car. I think the D9 kit is the only one to have because it is such a quality finish compared to the cheaper and far inferior alternatives. Another kit that D9 do retains the stock lifting pods, but replaces the single headlamp in the pods with twin projectors. However you need to modify the lifting mechanism so it doesn't lift as much. This obviously provides far superior lighting performance than stock and because the pods don't lift as high the aerodynamics will be better - though i'm not sure i'm a fan of the squinting half opening pod look - though having said that i'm not a big fan of the look of the 944 with stock headlights up anyway. Regarding the cost - well of course you can always do things cheaper, but you get something that looks cheaper and is sub-standard regarding quality.
Shooting a little in the dark (!) here, but I wouldn't have thought that the drag factor from the raised lights would be that great. Almost certainly not noticable, by all but the most sensitive drivers. And if you notice that sort of thing, there are likely to be other, larger inefficiencies elsewhere in the car that could be corrected more easily first. Who can guarantee that their tyres are going to be at precisely the right pressure all the time, for instance? If you blow them up during the day then the pressure will drop when it comes to nightime driving because they will be cooler, for instance. And that's not accounting for the occasional 2 or 3 PSI leak over the week since you last checked them. And I bet that slightly low tyre pressures will have a much greater impact on both drag and handling than some pop-up headlights popped-up. (FWIW, I once heard that if cruising between 90 and 100, there is a difference of about 1mpg MPG between having the lights down and up on a 951. Can't vouch for the accuracy of this as I can't even remember where I heard it, but that suggests that the difference in drag is measurable, but minimal.) Discussion about quality is interesting. The quality of the Porsche-designed and engineered standard solution has always struck me as being excellent ... Oli.
George Elliott
New member
Oli, if you drive at say 40 mph with the window down, I think you will be surprised by the resistance if you put your hand out flat against the slipstream. I only noticed in the summer when it was hot. The two lamp pods are quite large, even compared to big hands! The comment of 1mpg is significant - its 4% approx. Anyway, more importantly for me, the 4 vent Badge panel looks stunning on Patricks car (333pg333), and I agree with you the lamp mechanism is very well made like the rest of the car. George 944T 964
George, Sure - that's another hand's breadth of drag, but that is small compared with the drag of the rest of the frontal aspect, or so I'd have thought. The 1mpg comment was actually the difference between driving with the lights on and up and driving with the lights off and down. So it would also account for the additional alternator load to provide the current for the various bulbs. So it won't all be attributable to the drag of the pods. Even if it was 4%, I'd suggest that this would pale into insignificance compared with slightly deflated tyres, for instance. I'm not arguing that pod drag isn't a factor - plainly it is. It's just that I think it's a tiny factor compared with everything else, and the cost of one of these conversions would probably be better spent on buying a few more BHP elsewhere if you only wanted to go faster. (Clearly the law of diminishing returns says that those £ will go less and less far the more modified your car already is, but the point stands.) Maybe I'm just being a cynic! There are other practical advantages as posted by Fen (less pedestrian damage, less to go wrong, no expensive glass lens fronts to chip etc) as well as the (slightly debatable) point about the conversion looking better than the original design ... Oli.
sawood12
New member
Fen, here's the other kit. Regarding aerodynamics of the headlights whilst up i'd imagine it would be quite drastic at very high speeds. For example at say 70mph i've noticed that if I operate my headlight washers I get water collecting behind the pod and it is being forced up which indicates an area of lower pressure and turbulence. Is with most things aerodynamic i'm very sceptical of claimed performanc benefits at speeds below about 120mph. Air is not a very dense fluid so even though spoilers and other appendages may be working from an aerodynamic viewpoint they are not going to be creating any meaningful forces under about 120mph.
Posts made and opinions expressed are those of the individual forum members
Use of the Forum is subject to the Terms and Conditions
