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Headlight Upgrades.

Nevermind, I got it fixed....for anybody reading this thread and considering doing this, DO IT!!!! I did the IPF housings, Hella 100/90w bulbs, and the cheapo chinese harness and WOW!!!! It really is amazing in the difference. The only regret I have is that I wasted my money on Autopal's and an HID kit the first time.

And yes, there IS a difference in the Autopal's and IPF's....both in quality, and light cutoff/output.
 
my 87 had the Silver star and i thought they were bright. i put in some Hella's with 55/60 bulbs were very dim. i changed the bulbs to napa 55/100's still dull. i made my own harness with 2 relays one for high beam and one for low beam and made a huge difference. not as white as the silver stars but the distance they shine is really far.
 
jeeptec said:
my 87 had the Silver star and i thought they were bright. i put in some Hella's with 55/60 bulbs were very dim. i changed the bulbs to napa 55/100's still dull. i made my own harness with 2 relays one for high beam and one for low beam and made a huge difference. not as white as the silver stars but the distance they shine is really far.
Click to expand...

The harness makes a big difference even with stock lights. A very worthwhile mod on it's own.
 
Just want to add that I recently installed a set of Autopal E-codes and the 55/60w bulbs they come with. It was an ok improvement, but nothing like when I put Hella E-codes with 55/60w bulbs in my other car. The Autopals have an OK cutoff, seems to be built to an OK quality - but they are definitely not as good as Hellas. Because the cutoff is not as sharp and well designed as the Hellas they force you to adjust the lights a little lower than is optimal. With my car, the cutoff is excellent and I can aim them down the road quite a distance without blinding other drivers. Of course, the price was the motivator for this one.

I can't wait to get the harness updgraded and some better main cables. The Jeep could really use them. Depending on how the lights look after that, I may toss in some higher wattage bulbs. Hopefully that will be enough to satisfy and I wont need to get different housings.
 
american_zero said:
Just want to add that I recently installed a set of Autopal E-codes and the 55/60w bulbs they come with. It was an ok improvement, but nothing like when I put Hella E-codes with 55/60w bulbs in my other car. The Autopals have an OK cutoff, seems to be built to an OK quality - but they are definitely not as good as Hellas. Because the cutoff is not as sharp and well designed as the Hellas they force you to adjust the lights a little lower than is optimal. With my car, the cutoff is excellent and I can aim them down the road quite a distance without blinding other drivers. Of course, the price was the motivator for this one.

I can't wait to get the harness updgraded and some better main cables. The Jeep could really use them. Depending on how the lights look after that, I may toss in some higher wattage bulbs. Hopefully that will be enough to satisfy and I wont need to get different housings.
Click to expand...

The harness will make you happy. Guaranteed.
 
scoobyxj said:
I would do a harness upgrade before anything else. Stock lights on a Cherokee are decent so if yours are poor then you definitely are getting voltage drop across the stock wiring. Choose your route. If you are decent with wiring a harness is easy to build (search the site gojeep did a very nice diagram a while back on his own site). If you choose to buy one be weary you get what you pay for with ebay junk. Make sure with either route you choose that it has good waterproof fuse holders. I built mine with 10AWG wire, but if you never plan to run high wattage bulbs then 16AWG would do you just fine.
Click to expand...

You can't be serious. The factor lenses are complete garbage. I updated to IPF H4 lenses 10 years ago and never looked back. I'm still running the same lenses and bulbs. I never upgraded the wiring and saw a huge improvement over stock. Now that my jeep is getting older, It seems to be time for a wiring upgrade. I'm going to start with a ground kit first since I'm seeing higher resistance on some of my other electrical items.

My main reason for shying away from a wiring harness is that relays can and do fail for a variety of reasons. I've had to rewire my headlights at a truck stop in Iowa due to a failed relay. I'd rather not do that while camping or offroading. Of course, you can always keep spare relays in the jeep. Probably not a bad idea.
 
I have an 88 XJ and a 90 MJ.

I have upgraded the battery cables and grounds on both, along with a larger fused alternator to battery cable. Headlamps are brighter and both vehicles crank over faster and their voltmeters now read higher.

About a month later, I installed the headlamp harness from www.eautoworks.com on each vehicle while retaining the Sylvania halogen bulbs in each one. Dramatic improvement with the harness. It's well made and easy to install.


I recently installed the Autopals on the MJ with the 55/60 bulbs. Nice improvement but I was used to Hella E-codes with 80/100 bulbs on my sports car. The jury is still out on this as I haven't been out driving the MJ at night much.
 
Last edited:
I really want to try out this eautoworks harness. I am not the most electric wiring inclined, so what goes into the install? Thanks guys
 
I just put the Hella Lamps in my '98 with the standard 60/55 watt bulbs. They didn't really make any difference over the Silver Star sealed beam:(. The aren,t as white. Although they do seem to shine farther up the road. I have made the harness except for the ceramic plugs I ordered from www.rallylights.com. Every headlight plug I can get locally has 14 gauge pig tails on them. The one I am getting is build it yourself. I made the whole harness out of 12 gauge wire with 30amp fuses, and relays. My trigger wires are 14 gauge, because I think that is close to the original harness. Once I get it together, I will think about higher wattage bulbs. I definitely do not want those blue high wattage bulbs though, because I know how bad they piss me off on the road.:wow: Around here all thelastara little PR Hondas have them, plus the thump-thump music:flamemad:.
 
metaldemon7 said:
I just put the Hella Lamps in my '98 with the standard 60/55 watt bulbs. They didn't really make any difference over the Silver Star sealed beam:(. The aren,t as white. Although they do seem to shine farther up the road. I have made the harness except for the ceramic plugs I ordered from www.rallylights.com. Every headlight plug I can get locally has 14 gauge pig tails on them. The one I am getting is build it yourself. I made the whole harness out of 12 gauge wire with 30amp fuses, and relays. My trigger wires are 14 gauge, because I think that is close to the original harness. Once I get it together, I will think about higher wattage bulbs. I definitely do not want those blue high wattage bulbs though, because I know how bad they piss me off on the road.:wow: Around here all thelastara little PR Hondas have them, plus the thump-thump music:flamemad:.
Click to expand...

Yea blue lights suck... I like the Pure White light...
 
The Cherokee's headlight wiring sucks. It is way to small for the current needed to efficiently power the headlamps. At the least get an upgraded harness. Look on ebay for a set of Cibies and give Dan Stern http://www.danielsternlighting.com a call. You won't go wrong with these headlights or his harness. He also sells the Cibie H4 headlights but ebay will be much cheaper.
 
metaldemon7 said:
I just put the Hella Lamps in my '98 with the standard 60/55 watt bulbs. They didn't really make any difference over the Silver Star sealed beam:(. The aren,t as white. Although they do seem to shine farther up the road. I have made the harness except for the ceramic plugs I ordered from www.rallylights.com. Every headlight plug I can get locally has 14 gauge pig tails on them. The one I am getting is build it yourself. I made the whole harness out of 12 gauge wire with 30amp fuses, and relays. My trigger wires are 14 gauge, because I think that is close to the original harness. Once I get it together, I will think about higher wattage bulbs. I definitely do not want those blue high wattage bulbs though, because I know how bad they piss me off on the road.:wow: Around here all thelastara little PR Hondas have them, plus the thump-thump music:flamemad:.
Click to expand...

Wattage does not equal color. Please do not confuse those terms. Higher wattage is usually good and gives more actual light, while higher frequency is just for bling.

The higher the frequency - yellow > white > blue > purple - the less useful light you actually have in low visibility situations. Get into rain with wet pavement and the blue and purple are basically useless for showing anything on the pavement. Putting our big huge amber on the racer was one of the best things that we have done for night visibility and it gives us much more visibility of the terrain than our big bright white HID lights. When I get my Hella housings installed in my XJ, I've got some yellow Hella bulbs that are getting installed...won't look as cool as the blue and purple, but I'll have way better visibility than them.
 
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