Let there be light!

Been contemplating my headlights lately. The older I get, the more trouble I have seeing at night. Been looking at LED lightbars, headlight conversions and thought I'd start with NAPA Safetylites. Anybody other old farts done any upgrades out there?

I bought some Ebay LED conversions (bout $60) They have the little fans to cool them down. Super bright and been going for a year now with no problems.

Bought the Napa lights for $48/pair, went home, started looking and my truck has 2 bulbs per side. Back to Napa.

If this doesn't work, I'm probably doing an LED conversion. I looked at some Rough Country flush mount LED's that I really like but I'm not sure about cutting holes in my truck.

LED light bars would not be street legal in most cases. I have seen some with fluted lens covers but not sure if those are street legal either. I had some KC's driving lights on my Tacoma that were wired to come on with the brights. They were great. Technically not street legal because they had 100w bulbs but they had street legal lenses so I never had a problem. I have 42" & 32" bars on my Tundra. I really only use them off road. Even at a 100 yards someone would not be happy with me. A good set of LED projector retrofits or some legal driving lights might be the way to go. I put LED bulbs in the fogs on my Tundra and they are great. Not sure you really want to put LEDs in a halogen housing. You will be blinding oncoming vehicles. Fogs are OK because they sit low. My Tundra has terrible headlights. I have a set of LED projector retrofits on order.

I'd still like some LED's for the boonies, including something I could flip on with my brights. I want to do something about my backup lights too.

NAPA had to order the other two lights, should I just do one side and compare???? lol!

Top NAPA SafetyLite, bottom OEM. The center is definitely brighter on the NAPA bulb and lights up your path better. I did not expect the yellows and blues but I think I see more detail with this light. Sort of like using yellow polarized sunglasses, less glare maybe?

I replaced reverse bulbs with leds and added less under bumper. I thought I screwed up with spots but they are fine. Flush mounts in bumper are nice but I did not want to cut holes.

My receiver hitch extends below my bumper. Been wondering if I could fab some mounts around it and do something similar.

Keep in mind that 4300k lighting has the most lumens. And also keep in mind that any other bulb type than what was originally installed in the headlight housing is not legal for use on public roads. If you have halogen bulb housings, then adding retrofit HID or LED is not legal without changing the projector or adding an appropriate projector into the halogen housing. Also, just adding a brighter LED or HID bulb into a halogen housing actually makes for LESS useable light on the road. The reason being, the halogen headlamp housing is designed with a focal point that is too broad to work on an HID or LED. The HID and LED light point source is very narrow, and the halogen headlamp housing will not be able to properly speed the light source.

I really spent a LOT of time researching this exact thing a few years ago. I had a 2012 jeep....it's headlights were slightly better than hanging a kerosine lantern from the grill. I wound up buying some Lexus LS460 HID headlamps from a salvage yard and gutting the projectors, diffusers, high/low solenoids, bulbs, and ballasts. I then retrofitted them into my stock jeep headlamp housings. Made for some exceptional lights that were DOT legal and didn't blind oncoming traffic.

Good to know! I guess I'm glad I went with the halogen

Exactly why I am spending the money on some professionally built retrofits. I think a lot of people just pop a LED bulb in to a halogen housing and hope for the best. From everything I have read you are just going to scatter the light and blind people. Now I did have good luck with LEDs in my factory fogs on the Tundra. The original fogs were worthless. You could hardly even tell they were on. I yet to test in a heavy fog.

I had the same problem with my Jeep. I could have had a better light by strapping the old lady to the fender with a Maglite.
I would up getting the JW Speaker headlights designed specifically for Jeep.

The JWSpeakers are probably one of the best lights made. Period.

Made in USA!!!