My Headlights are Awful. Suggestions?

Snk-Byet01

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I had the rare unfortunate condition last night, of driving home in rain at night. Jeebus, I couldn't see anything. High beams were actually worse. I had to light a match to see if they were on.
I'm no spring chicken, but I still have 20-20 with corrective contact lenses.
I have HIDs in my SVT Focus, and they are great but I don't know if I want to go the HID route with installing projectors, ballast and etc. to do a good job. Is there any good over-the-counter bulbs that you can recommend? I do need to polish the lenses (again), but they really aren't that bad, a little misty at the moment. Maybe I need to get the headlights aligned?
I'm open for suggestions. With the worn down road stripes, the night darkness and rain it was a white knuckle experience to see where I was going in those conditions.
TIA
 

scottydsntknow

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Nothing with a blue coating on the bulb. IE Silverstars or "xenon" whatevers. Philips Xtreme Vision are good, I use them in mine with aligned and sealed LRM headlights and they do a good job. The LRM projectors are also very good if you use a top quality halogen bulb from Candlepower or wherever. Failing that there are plenty of retrofitters out there who will do a plug and play set although its $$$. And polishing the lenses removes the clear=they'll fog up again. I'd go with a good used OEM set or a new LRM set, seal the seams with clear RTV and a good set of halogens. What I did and there are no streetlights at all on the backroads and even many main roads here and I can see fine.

 

Snk-Byet01

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Nothing with a blue coating on the bulb. IE Silverstars or "xenon" whatevers. Philips Xtreme Vision are good, I use them in mine with aligned and sealed LRM headlights and they do a good job. The LRM projectors are also very good if you use a top quality halogen bulb from Candlepower or wherever. Failing that there are plenty of retrofitters out there who will do a plug and play set although its $$$. And polishing the lenses removes the clear=they'll fog up again. I'd go with a good used OEM set or a new LRM set, seal the seams with clear RTV and a good set of halogens. What I did and there are no streetlights at all on the backroads and even many main roads here and I can see fine.

Thanks for the information. I appreciate it. ?, who is LRM?
 

scottydsntknow

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LMR, LRM... LRM is an Air Force acronym for something else lol... and yeah Spain is super relaxed.

As for HIDs in stock housings... they are a bad idea for a lot of reasons. The beam pattern is erratic, hot spots, you are spraying light all over the place and blinding incoming traffic and if you look at what a GOOD halogen setup or a legit HID retrofit looks like lighting wise vs the "plug and play" kits you'll see the difference. That's just a few things. Google for more info.

Either run a real good halogen or get a legit retrofit. If you happen to have a 94-98 car you can have the best of both worlds with the DEPO projectors and 9011/9012 HIR halogens. HIRs are halogens that are 75% as bright as OEM HIDs and way brighter than the PnP crap in stock housings. They're what is used in snow plows and it only takes clipping a few tabs on the base of the bulb to fit in 9005/9006 slots which the DEPO projectors are.

For the New Edge... the only projectors that are sold that don't look like rice shit are the LMR (got it right that time lol) projectors. The stuff Raxiom sells looks like something you'd see in a 2003 FATF movie. I find that OEM smoked or good replica OEM smoked lights with a real good 9007 bulb is fine.
 

CobraBob

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Reading this thread makes me really more appreciate the full LED headlights on my G70. The low-beam assist feature (headlamps steer automatically to the left or the right together with the steering wheel) is great on turns after dark. I absolutely hated my older car headlight systems that didn't offer sufficient brightness with the low beams, so I can appreciate the OP's frustration. When the auto makers started offering full LED headlight systems I was really happy. Having a bright headlight (low beam) for nighttime driving is IMO a must. So any option that provides the driver with more light than the factory (non-LED) headlights provide is a big plus. And a big safety plus!
 

CobraBob

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By the way, aren't some of the retrofit options not street legal? I found this info on Wikipedia.

"When a halogen headlamp is retrofitted with an HID bulb, light distribution and output are altered. In the United States, vehicle lighting that does not conform to FMVSS 108 is not street legal. Glare will be produced and the headlamp's type approval or certification becomes invalid with the altered light distribution, so the headlamp is no longer street-legal in some locales. In the US, suppliers, importers and vendors that offer non-compliant kits are subject to civil fines. By October 2004, the NHTSA had investigated 24 suppliers and all resulted in termination of sale or recalls."
 

98 svt

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By the way, aren't some of the retrofit options not street legal? I found this info on Wikipedia.

"When a halogen headlamp is retrofitted with an HID bulb, light distribution and output are altered. In the United States, vehicle lighting that does not conform to FMVSS 108 is not street legal. Glare will be produced and the headlamp's type approval or certification becomes invalid with the altered light distribution, so the headlamp is no longer street-legal in some locales. In the US, suppliers, importers and vendors that offer non-compliant kits are subject to civil fines. By October 2004, the NHTSA had investigated 24 suppliers and all resulted in termination of sale or recalls."


Yes, however, so is speeding and installing O/R mid pipe etc.
 

scottydsntknow

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Except a PROPER retrofit will have a dead even cutoff line which will reduce glare and any issues with oncoming traffic. Retrofit= baking open the housings, cutting the back of the light and installing actual properly designed aftermarket HIDs or OEM HIDs from another vehicle. Properly aim them and set the cutoff and go. The issue with HIDs is when someone installs a "plug and play" HID bulb set in place of the stock bulbs without doing anything else. And then, as I mentioned before, you get into issues with these $40-$60 kits not only being problematic for those reasons but the quality/materials is shit. No quartz glass, no laser aligned bulbs, no actual QC to verify correct output of the bulb or that the ballast is ok. And THEN you get into the higher wattage kits that are sold because ppl think that their 55w kit has to be so much better than the same 35w kit when all that is doing is overdrawing the stock wiring and not actually producing anymore light.

So yeah... /rant.
 

Snk-Byet01

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I'll probably go with the Phillips bulbs for now. I was looking at the LMR projectors and some folks were complaining that the turn signal bulb doesn't fit correctly. Nobody mentioned how they overcame that problem.
Do the LMRs come with bulbs, or is that a separate purchase?
Thanks, folks.
 

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