The teepee style filaments purportedly give the best shaped light pattern and illumination. The only modern replacement bulbs with this style of filaments are only being produced in a 50 CP/32 CP as far as I know.
The reproduction headlight bulb, when installed in a Model T battery-powered headlight, has the locating pins placed horizontally, and the filaments are side by side. This means that when changing between Dim and Bright, the light moves sideways, not up and down.
The way to get the lights to project up and down is to turn the socket holder 90 degrees in the headlight bucket. I wasn’t willing (or able - I did try) to turn the socket holders in my nicely painted headlight buckets. So I came up with another plan.
I took a pair of tin snips to the socket holder and cut a new slot at 6 o'clock for the bulb socket tab to slide into, and just bent the cut material downward without even cutting it. Just as a reference, the original slot is at 3 o'clock when viewing the headlight from the front. The rear area of the socket holder gives plenty of support, so even after cutting out the new slot, there is still plenty of surface area.
From the outside, the headlight is just as original, but the socket now has the bulb tabs oriented vertically, so the modern bulbs have their filaments one over the other. My lights now have true Lo & Hi beams that move vertically.
I wanted to try out some LED headlight bulbs, so I got a pair of the aluminium bodied 74475 LED bulbs in warm white from Ledlight.com. They are supposed to illuminate one row of leds for Lo beam and two rows for Hi beam, but all the leds are lighting, no matter the switch position. After speaking with customer service, they informed me I would need to order two of the 54738 6 ohm 50 watt resistors to make things work properly - wish I had known that when I ordered the bulbs. I have read some posts here on the Forum where they said these LED bulbs cannot be focused, while others say that they can be focused. I'll have to see for myself.
My intention is to drive with lights on always. With dual taillights and a 3rd brake light the power consumption was getting out of hand, so everything is getting converted to LED lighting. The warm white leds don’t look out of place, and the amber blinker bulbs behind the amber lenses look brighter and stronger the the regular clear incandescent bulbs did.
I’m looking forward to having the headlights converted to LED soon so I can post my experience, hopefully with positive results.
