So what kind of lights are you running?

[Spinnakerblue89]

I dunno, I'm just curious. Got to thinking about this with my buddy coming over tomorrow with his '96 Cherokee to put in a new headlight setup. 

 

With a KSuspension headlight harness, IPF H4 headlight assemblies, and Sylvania Silverstar Ultra- 9003/H4s, I'm liking what I see at night. I have to adjust them again for the third time because everyone thinks I'm driving with highs on at night. 

 

I have the SS ultras in by Rover and ZJ as well, been running them for years now. But I think for my '88 Ranger, I'll try branching out with some Philips CrystalVision Platinums. 

 

What are you running in your rigs? What have your experiences been like?

[89 MJ]

I’m running Hella housings and H4 bulbs in my Comanche. I’ve also got a relay harness in it. My brother has the same in his J10s, and I’ve got the 4x6 version in my Eagle. They are pretty similar to Holley Retrobrights, but they are way cheaper. 

[gogmorgo]

Sealed beams with a DIY relay harness behind some retro stone guards on my daily driver. Still no complaints. The other MJ has Rampage H4 housings in it. I wasn't as impressed as I was expecting to be but I haven't got around to building a relay harness for it yet.

I've been thinking about trying to rig up an xj washer fluid tank and turn the rear washer circuit into a headlight washer jet, so I could run the 3000K Retrobrights without so much concern for them not being heated. I want to try them out. I find most LEDs are in the 5-6000K range which makes them not great in the snow, and the ones that aren't almost all look ridiculous.

[Salvagedcircuit]

1 hour ago, 89 MJ said:

I’m running Hella housings and H4 bulbs in my Comanche. My brother has the same in his J10s, and I’ve got the 4x6 version in my Eagle. They are pretty similar to Holley Retrobrights, but they are way cheaper. 

 

I have the retrobrights and they are excellent. At $400 new that's a bit pricy, but I got lucky and was able to snag a yellow pair for $90 and later on a clear pair for $150.

[89 MJ]

15 minutes ago, Salvagedcircuit said:

 

I have the retrobrights and they are excellent. At $400 new that's a bit pricy, but I got lucky and was able to snag a yellow pair for $90 and later on a clear pair for $150.

That’s a great deal! My Hellas were somewhere around $100 new on Amazon

[Eagle_SX4]

Glad to hear good things about the hella h4 housings. I just got a set and they will be installed soon.

[89 MJ]

16 minutes ago, Eagle_SX4 said:

Glad to hear good things about the hella h4 housings. I just got a set and they will be installed soon.

For the MJ or the Eagle? I’ve got H4s for the high and low beams and then their H1 bulbs with their housings in my Eagle. Was twice as much as the MJ lights, but still worth it. 

[Eagle_SX4]

3 minutes ago, 89 MJ said:

For the MJ or the Eagle?

The MJ

[eaglescout526]

Factory sealed beams coupled with running the road lamps and relay harness I have give me good light. +1 for not blinding people with horribly aimed LEDs and classic look all around.

[75sv1]

I have CIBIEs on my XJ with a Susquehanna  MS harness. Had a cheap harness. One of the plugs came off at night. I like the CIBIEs. I had AtuoPals . Quite good for the price, plus a harness. I think I had Rampage. Lows were OK. The high beams sort of fizzle out. I've used various H4 German bulbs. Also, on my 240D. I think a Hella and a Carrillo. 

[gogmorgo]

14 hours ago, eaglescout526 said:

+1 for not blinding people with horribly aimed LEDs and classic look all around.

+2 on this one. Aiming headlights correctly does a lot more for vision than just installing brighter lights... or in the case of most cheap LEDs, whiter but less bright.

[Salvagedcircuit]

8 minutes ago, gogmorgo said:

+2 on this one. Aiming headlights correctly does a lot more for vision than just installing brighter lights... or in the case of most cheap LEDs, whiter but less bright.

Indeed! I found one of my adjustment screws had a drywall screw in it. I went ahead and grabbed some Dorman 42185 headlight adjusters. It's amazing that part is still available. Gonna install them soon.

[ghetdjc320]

Once I switched to a true projector housing I’ll never go back. On my last MJ I used a custom built 5x7 Black Flame Customs unit with Apollo 2.0 projectors and H1 bulbs. The cutoff is super crisp and there were no dead spots in the light output. That was my 4th set of true projector headlights in Jeeps. I install them in anything we get if it doesn’t have them already. Can’t emphasize enough how good they are. You can go LED, HID or Halogen with the bulbs, it’s that quality glass projector that counts.

[DesertRat1991]

I thought the stock headlight pattern was terrible. Outside city limits where streetlights were few and far between, the shadows and hotspots wreaked havoc on my eyes. Truck-Lite LEDs with the Putco harness felt like a night vs day difference. 

 

Stock low beam:

 

Truck-Lite low beam:

[pizzaman09]

7 hours ago, DesertRat1991 said:

I thought the stock headlight pattern was terrible. Outside city limits where streetlights were few and far between, the shadows and hotspots wreaked havoc on my eyes. Truck-Lite LEDs with the Putco harness felt like a night vs day difference. 

 

Stock low beam:

 

Truck-Lite low beam:

Very nice!  Truck Lite is local to me, know many people that have worked there.  They make some very nice lights.

 

 

 

I am running Sylvania sealed beams with a stock harness, they are pretty mediocre but better than the old sealed beam I had that had a hole in the lense and was no longer sealed.

My friend did Holly Retrobrite headlights on his 86 F150, they look amazing and perform amazing.

[Pete M]

did the 12v harness with an H4 conversion to the 88 I'm working on and the light output is fantastic  

[motownXJdad]

I'm running these i found on Amazon for around $90 for the pair, they are plenty bright, have a nice Z shaped cutoff so you don't blind oncoming traffic. i really have no complaints so far other than after a year id rather have a more stock looking light. i might bite the bullet and get a pair of Holley retrobright LEDs, the price tag is the major holdup for me though

[Brewinghokie]

I'm running some H4 Euro housings and absolutely love them. I need to adjust them some but they're fantastic. I'll have to try to remember to take some pics soon. I tried to find the link for these and can't find it but pretty sure I found them on here.

[gogmorgo]

I haven’t really been a fan of the Euro lights. The high beam is definitely excellent, but the way the low beam kicks up on the right is aggravating. I ended up with them aimed so low to stop from blinding myself in falling snow, or off road signs, that I don’t have a ton of visibility on the left. I’ve also been able to tell that oncoming traffic with a slight right hand bend is unhappy, or anyone travelling the same direction in a lane to my right.

For anyone going H4 housing I’d strongly recommend sticking with SAE lenses.

You might also encounter legality issues there. We can run them up here because Transport Canada accepts both ECE and SAE lighting standards, but US DOT doesn’t permit the ECE. I don’t expect you’ll run into actual problems any more than anyone running the trash offshore LEDs, but you never know. 

[Spinnakerblue89]

A while back when I was replacing the headlights on my ZJ, I read about Halogen  assemblies and LED assemblies and why the differences mattered due to how the light was dispersed and patterned.

[gogmorgo]

1 hour ago, Spinnakerblue89 said:

A while back when I was replacing the headlights on my ZJ, I read about Halogen  assemblies and LED assemblies and why the differences mattered due to how the light was dispersed and patterned.

Yeah. I will say that drop-in LED replacements from reputable manufacturers have improved a lot in the last few years, and even five or ten years ago the early sealed beam replacements from reputable manufacturers were good. The trouble is headlights are a precision optical instrument and all the dirt cheap knockoffs floating around online have build quality all over the map, and unfortunately having a bright white hotspot on the road immediately ahead of them can fool people into thinking they have improved vision, or worse, they get an incredibly bright unfocused flood that completely blinds every other road user and only illuminates the important things by accident.

[Spinnakerblue89]

14 minutes ago, gogmorgo said:

Yeah. I will say that drop-in LED replacements from reputable manufacturers have improved a lot in the last few years, and even five or ten years ago the early sealed beam replacements from reputable manufacturers were good. The trouble is headlights are a precision optical instrument and all the dirt cheap knockoffs floating around online have build quality all over the map, and unfortunately having a bright white hotspot on the road immediately ahead of them can fool people into thinking they have improved vision, or worse, they get an incredibly bright unfocused flood that completely blinds every other road user and only illuminates the important things by accident.

You aren't kidding, a friend of mine put in some LEDs on his RAM 1500 several years ago and he said the spotlight affect was the least of his problems- the intensity of the lights focusing on one spot was blinding and distracting, and after he would get out of the truck after getting home at night, the light would follow in his vision annoyingly for a few minutes after the fact. Incidentally, they didn't last very long, but I don't recall for how long either.

[gogmorgo]

To make matters worse on the proper aiming front there's been a bit of a trend where manufacturers haven't made correct aiming very easy. There's a lot of vehicles where you just get a diagonal sweep and you have to compromise the left/right aim to get the up/down you want. Or vice versa. Hopefully we see an end to that trend now that IIHS is including headlight performance in it's safety scores.

There's a lot on this topic I can rant on... I should probably get off my soapbox and quit derailing this thread.

[ghetdjc320]

19 hours ago, gogmorgo said:

Yeah. I will say that drop-in LED replacements from reputable manufacturers have improved a lot in the last few years, and even five or ten years ago the early sealed beam replacements from reputable manufacturers were good. The trouble is headlights are a precision optical instrument and all the dirt cheap knockoffs floating around online have build quality all over the map, and unfortunately having a bright white hotspot on the road immediately ahead of them can fool people into thinking they have improved vision, or worse, they get an incredibly bright unfocused flood that completely blinds every other road user and only illuminates the important things by accident.

[coheed]

I've been running the Wagner H6054BL for a few years now. They're xenon instead of halogen. They're a good bit brighter than the halogen versions, and you don't have to worry about any kind of different beam pattern or changing your aim. So far the earliest failure was two and a half years, not sure how many hours though. I also have a no name headlight relay harness that I swapped some factory connectors onto. The set of Hella 500s also help, but I'm thinking about swapping to some led fog lights instead.