Mtrhd0024
New member
- Joined
- Mar 5, 2009
- Messages
- 103
- Reaction score
- 1
- Points
- 0
- Location
- High Point/Thomasville NC
- Vehicle Year
- 1990
- Vehicle
- Ford
- Engine Size
- 2.9
I've not posted on here in quite a long time, but tonight I both received and installed new headlights for my 1990 Bronco II, and I wanted to share my experience.
This is relevant if you have an 89-92 Ranger, 89-90 Bronco II, or a 90-94 Explorer. All three vehicles share the same headlights, and your results will be the same.
Almost all of the above mentioned vehicles have extremely crappy headlights by now, (lets face it, they're getting old) which don't illuminate the road worth a darn. I could barely drive above 40mph at night because the visibility was so bad. I had water in my lights, the bulbs would get wet and blow out, the lenses were yellowed (I polished them once which helped, but that didn't last long) they were just a mess in general. When I finally got stopped by the police last Friday for having poor lights, I figured it was time to do something about them.
I purchased a new set of headlights on ebay for 63 dollars and some change, shipped to my door. The seller I bought them from was great, I had them within 3 buisness days.
For clarity sake, I want to link you to several posts I read over on the Explorer Forum (sorry to link outside TRS, but I feel I need to give credit where credit is due) which will be similar to my post, but they helped me a lot so the additional reading will be good for filling in the blanks on all the detail I left out.
These links are here:
About Different Bulb choices: http://www.explorerforum.com/forums//showthread.php?t=178127
About Replacing the Headlights themselves: http://www.explorerforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=183532
About upgrading to the brighter 9007 bulbs: http://www.explorerforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=181879&highlight=Headlight+Replace
Read through those three links and you'll learn a lot. I'll be repeating some of the above information, with a bit of my own experience thrown in. Again, this is not a "how to" necessarily, but simply a demonstration of my results. It shows what can be done at the very least. If you want in depth "how to's" read the above links.
What I did tonight, was install brand new headlight housings, modify them to fit in 9007 bulbs which are 30% brighter than stock, (its easy) as well as modify my wiring to run the brighter bulbs correctly (the high and low beams are wired in reverse on the stock 9004 bulb, and the upgraded 9007 bulbs)
9007 Bulbs came stock in some of the later Explorers, and they can be made to fit with very minor modification into the standard headlight housings. What you end up getting is a bulb that is 30% brighter than stock, which doesn't cost you any more than the stock bulb when you have to buy replacements, unlike the Sylvania Silver Stars and other upgraded bulbs which can be 40 or 50 dollars a pair.
I personally chose to use 9007 silverstars (they're expensive at $40 a pair) but my point is you don't need to use them to benefit from this modification.
At the start of the night, my headlights looked like this:
Just standard 9004 Sylvania bulbs in old, faded, water filled headlight housings.
Now before I show you this beam shot, let me warn you that there was much more light in real life than the camera actually showed. It was difficult to get the camera to pick up the beams properly, so very little light is shown. The camera was on the same setting in both the before and after beam shot though, so it will still give you an idea of how much improved the headlights were afterwards.
Beam shot before:
Terrible isn't it. Thats my neighbors mailbox just barely showing up in the picture.
So I started tearing apart the front end on my car:
Close up of the old headlight. You can see water inside it:
One side out:
Both sides out:
The old with the new. Fancy guessing which are the new ones?
My new 9007 Silverstar headlight bulbs still in the package, alongside a standard 9004 Sylvania headlight bulb.
One new headlight in:
And finally, both installed, both sides re-wired (I simply re-pinned the plug) and my new Sylvania Siver Star headlight bulbs installed!
In the picture, its a somewhat purpleish light, however in real life, its just a very white, very bright looking light. There's really no purple look to it at all, and you do not get any of the terrible HID glare that you would get from putting HID bulbs in a non HID housing.
And finally; a Beam shot after:
This was before I aimed my headlights, they were pointing low in the picture, even with the high beams on. Bear in mind again, there is a LOT more light in real life than what shows up in the picture. The road in front of my truck was now flooded with light! But between the before and after picture, with the same camera on the same setting, you ought to be able to get a sense of the improvement I saw!
Not only were my headlights now much brighter, but the Silverstars help to illuminate the sides of the road a lot better. You can see much further into the distance, and much more off to the side than you could before. The whiter light also brings out the detail in things much better.
This whole swap took me about 2 hours, from pulling the old ones out, to modifying the new housings, rewiring my plugs, and putting it all back together.
Anyway, I want to stop typing now before this post gets so long that people won't read it. Feel free to ask me any questions, I'll try and answer them as best I can! I just felt like sharing, because this is now one of my favorite "mods" that I've done to my truck. It makes night driving so much less stressful! And I'm finally able to do the speed limit now! (I hated driving like a granny!)
This is relevant if you have an 89-92 Ranger, 89-90 Bronco II, or a 90-94 Explorer. All three vehicles share the same headlights, and your results will be the same.
Almost all of the above mentioned vehicles have extremely crappy headlights by now, (lets face it, they're getting old) which don't illuminate the road worth a darn. I could barely drive above 40mph at night because the visibility was so bad. I had water in my lights, the bulbs would get wet and blow out, the lenses were yellowed (I polished them once which helped, but that didn't last long) they were just a mess in general. When I finally got stopped by the police last Friday for having poor lights, I figured it was time to do something about them.
I purchased a new set of headlights on ebay for 63 dollars and some change, shipped to my door. The seller I bought them from was great, I had them within 3 buisness days.
For clarity sake, I want to link you to several posts I read over on the Explorer Forum (sorry to link outside TRS, but I feel I need to give credit where credit is due) which will be similar to my post, but they helped me a lot so the additional reading will be good for filling in the blanks on all the detail I left out.
These links are here:
About Different Bulb choices: http://www.explorerforum.com/forums//showthread.php?t=178127
About Replacing the Headlights themselves: http://www.explorerforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=183532
About upgrading to the brighter 9007 bulbs: http://www.explorerforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=181879&highlight=Headlight+Replace
Read through those three links and you'll learn a lot. I'll be repeating some of the above information, with a bit of my own experience thrown in. Again, this is not a "how to" necessarily, but simply a demonstration of my results. It shows what can be done at the very least. If you want in depth "how to's" read the above links.
What I did tonight, was install brand new headlight housings, modify them to fit in 9007 bulbs which are 30% brighter than stock, (its easy) as well as modify my wiring to run the brighter bulbs correctly (the high and low beams are wired in reverse on the stock 9004 bulb, and the upgraded 9007 bulbs)
9007 Bulbs came stock in some of the later Explorers, and they can be made to fit with very minor modification into the standard headlight housings. What you end up getting is a bulb that is 30% brighter than stock, which doesn't cost you any more than the stock bulb when you have to buy replacements, unlike the Sylvania Silver Stars and other upgraded bulbs which can be 40 or 50 dollars a pair.
I personally chose to use 9007 silverstars (they're expensive at $40 a pair) but my point is you don't need to use them to benefit from this modification.
At the start of the night, my headlights looked like this:
Just standard 9004 Sylvania bulbs in old, faded, water filled headlight housings.
Now before I show you this beam shot, let me warn you that there was much more light in real life than the camera actually showed. It was difficult to get the camera to pick up the beams properly, so very little light is shown. The camera was on the same setting in both the before and after beam shot though, so it will still give you an idea of how much improved the headlights were afterwards.
Beam shot before:
Terrible isn't it. Thats my neighbors mailbox just barely showing up in the picture.
So I started tearing apart the front end on my car:
Close up of the old headlight. You can see water inside it:
One side out:
Both sides out:
The old with the new. Fancy guessing which are the new ones?
My new 9007 Silverstar headlight bulbs still in the package, alongside a standard 9004 Sylvania headlight bulb.
One new headlight in:
And finally, both installed, both sides re-wired (I simply re-pinned the plug) and my new Sylvania Siver Star headlight bulbs installed!
In the picture, its a somewhat purpleish light, however in real life, its just a very white, very bright looking light. There's really no purple look to it at all, and you do not get any of the terrible HID glare that you would get from putting HID bulbs in a non HID housing.
And finally; a Beam shot after:
This was before I aimed my headlights, they were pointing low in the picture, even with the high beams on. Bear in mind again, there is a LOT more light in real life than what shows up in the picture. The road in front of my truck was now flooded with light! But between the before and after picture, with the same camera on the same setting, you ought to be able to get a sense of the improvement I saw!
Not only were my headlights now much brighter, but the Silverstars help to illuminate the sides of the road a lot better. You can see much further into the distance, and much more off to the side than you could before. The whiter light also brings out the detail in things much better.
This whole swap took me about 2 hours, from pulling the old ones out, to modifying the new housings, rewiring my plugs, and putting it all back together.
Anyway, I want to stop typing now before this post gets so long that people won't read it. Feel free to ask me any questions, I'll try and answer them as best I can! I just felt like sharing, because this is now one of my favorite "mods" that I've done to my truck. It makes night driving so much less stressful! And I'm finally able to do the speed limit now! (I hated driving like a granny!)
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