New headlights. I can see at last! See at last!

Here's my headlight progression in the last year.

#1. Stock. Not good at all, as you all know.

#2. Cheap ebay 'Diamond' H4 headlights. Better than stock, but still not all that great.

#3. I broke down today and bought some silverstars at $20 each. I figured if they weren't any better I'd just bring them back. Well whoopety doo...they are pretty darn nice. They actually have a PATTERN! All my other bulbs just vaguely put light all over, but these have an actual designed lens that points the light where it's supposed to be. And the brights are actually bright. Halleluyah! Now I just need to make some new wiring harnesses and then we'll be stylin! Sweet.

-Keith

ps-if you want my ebay 'diamond lens' pieces of sh*t, you can have them for free if you come and get them. They're in the trash.

Those Silverstars are real good for a stock style light. I like the patteren, and if you upgrade the harness they really brighten up. I do wish however that they were a little less blueish looking from the drivers seat on highbeems.

I changed to SilverStars a few months ago and was not pleased with the results. They did not seem to be much brighter. I checked the voltage at the headlight sockets and found that they were receiving only 9.5 volts nowhere near the 13.5 volts available at the battery. The stock wiring is just too small to carry enough current without voltage drop.
I did a headlight wiring upgrade...see the following link.
http://go.jeep-xj.info/HowtoHeadlightLoom.htm

I used 10-gauge wire for all the high current wiring. I picked up a couple of 30 amp, 12 volt relays at Radio Shack. All the terminals have been crimped and soldered to keep voltage drop to a minimum.

What a difference, the SilverStars now provide the advertised increased visibility.
I would not waste my money on the SilverStars (or on any other high performance light) unless I was going to upgrade the wiring.

Larry

I just recently replaced my stock Wagners with Phillips beams. The increase in light is great. Low beam actually throws a straight (and bright) beam about 100 ft. in front of the heep. But the brights are what have the best improvement. They are at least 3 times as bright as the Wagners and have a really specific pattern. Driving down the suburbs they will throw light out in 180* and just below the roofs of the houses, you can actually see the cutoff line.

But I'm sure they're not getting full power. I want to throw in a new harness, but I have no electrical skills whatsoever. Would IPF's wiring harness work with stocker style lights?

If you are good at all doing your own wireing this guy has what you need to make your own harness. He includes everything you need.Pigtails,Fuses,relays,realy holders.Daniel Stern Lighting .
That way you can use whatever gauge wire you want. Just got my stuff in the mail...Now just need to get busy.

lazyxj said:

I changed to SilverStars a few months ago and was not pleased with the results. They did not seem to be much brighter. I checked the voltage at the headlight sockets and found that they were receiving only 9.5 volts nowhere near the 13.5 volts available at the battery. The stock wiring is just too small to carry enough current without voltage drop.
I did a headlight wiring upgrade...see the following link.
http://go.jeep-xj.info/HowtoHeadlightLoom.htm

I used 10-gauge wire for all the high current wiring. I picked up a couple of 30 amp, 12 volt relays at Radio Shack. All the terminals have been crimped and soldered to keep voltage drop to a minimum.

What a difference, the SilverStars now provide the advertised increased visibility.
I would not waste my money on the SilverStars (or on any other high performance light) unless I was going to upgrade the wiring.

Larry

Click to expand...

Hey kamagnuss where did you purchase yours from?

TORX

Advance Discount Auto Parts, in Sarasota, FL. I went back today and bought all the parts to make a wiring harness. Maybe I'll put it together tonight. I'll post up some pics if I do.

-Keith

You guys that are doing a headlight wiring harness upgrade that are driving older XJs might also want to think about making your corner marker lights flash in addition to the blinkers under the headlight. An extra upgrade while your fooling with that wiring system.

I plan on doing both in the near future before I buy new lights just to see the difference.

When I did my harness upgrade I found some heavy duty sockets at Advance Auto with 14 guage wires on them. I disasembaled them and soldered 10 guage to the termanels. The 10 guage fit in the sockets great and Iwas even able to put the boot back over the whole thing. The relays they had said 30A on the package, but when I got them out it said 40A on the relay. The only disavantage of the relays I used was they only had one termanal for the light side of them. I just soldered both wires to one termanal. If you do a search I listed the part numbers for the sockets in one of the threads from a while back. Also I just cut my orignal sockets out, insted of using a plug on them.

Okay...I did the harness relay tonight. Holy bejezzes. Big difference. Here's a couple of figures for you:
Voltage @ battery with jeep off = 12.86
Voltage @ battery with jeep on = 13.96
Voltage @ old plug with jeep on = 12.9
Voltage @ old plug with jeep off = 11.64
Voltage @ new plug with jeep on = 13.91
Voltage @ new plug with jeep off = 12.48

As you can see from the pictures below, the new pattern (on the right if you're seeing impaired) is much whiter and cleaner. By cleaner...I mean that the pattern of the light has much more solid edges instead of kind of blending in, if you know what I mean. I took out the jeep on a pitch black road (the one in front of my house because I live in the boonies) and compared it to my other car that has HID's, which I used to think were God's gift to lighting...and the new lights are VERY comparable to the HID's.
My old lights were a little dimmer than my Hella 450 fog patterns. I felt like the Hellas totally lit up the road. Now with the new plugs, you can't even tell that the fog lights are on at all. I also have a set of Hella 550 driving lights, and I thought those were the sun when I put them on. Now I'll admit, they still light it up real nice far away, but it's not nearly as much of a difference as before. The best part is that this cost me about $35 and 3 hours of time...and it could possibly save my life. This is by far the best mod on my jeep. If I bought another one, I would do this as my first mod. Later.

-Keith







In this next one, you really can't tell the difference through the camera, but in real life it was a big difference.

Why not just go E-code? I run Silverstars in my car simply because the EDM headlights are $950 a pair for non HID, and the HID version is over $1200. The XJ sports Hella E-code buckets with Hella halogen bulbs. Currently I have a pair of pretty high wattage bulbs (maybe 115/90) but even with a stock 65/55 bulb the difference is huge. Think about how a flashlight works. You have the same bulb no matter how you focus the light, but as you adjust it from flood to spot, more and more light is in the useable range. The same thing happens when you move to an E-code. The design of the lamp housing itself focuses the light into a more useable pattern. Straight from the Susquehanna Motorsports description :



E-code lamps have a wide beam that lights the road from side to side. They are useful at 300-400 feet. There is a sharp horizontal transition from dark to light about 1" high at 25 feet. A wedge of light on the right side lights up roadside signs. On low beam you can expect about four times as much light on the road as a sealed beam and twice as much on high beam. Because of the tight beam control, these lamps can be aimed very accurately which facilitates the use of upgraded bulbs without offending oncoming traffic. These lamps are not certified for use on public highways in the US and are sold for off road and racing purposes only.



Upgrading the wiring is good no matter what lamp you run, E-code, stock, Silverstar, whatever, but the lamp itself is the biggest factor in quality lighting. As far as the legality of E-codes, I've been running them for 4 years now without incident, even with the higher wattage bulbs, and I haven't had a problem. With the horizontal cutoff, properly adjusted E-codes do not blind oncoming traffic. YMMV, but I wouldn't waste the money to upgrade from a sealed beam to another sealed beam, no matter what the color.

I could care less about the color...did you not notice the perfect flat line across my garage? My old headlights did not do that. I understand what you're saying about the ecodes...but I don't think I would ever want a brighter light than I have now. They're great, and I'm very happy with them. So for less than the cost of your ecodes, I bought new lights and wires that work great...and will never get water in them no matter how deep I go. From what I've just seen on my jeep, I will never buy ecodes.

Did you notice you're parked about 10 feet from the garage door? And the halo of light spilling out above and below your "perfect" flat line is not only wasted energy, but it is that light that is blinding to oncoming traffic. E-codes do not have that wasted light shining up. Maybe in FL you don't have deer running around, but up here in the rust belt the ability to see far enough ahead to avoid ending up running into/over a 150 pound animal is more important than saving a few dollars on sub-par lighting.

I'm bowing to you. You are the king of lighting. Thank you for being the first prick on naxja that I've encountered. I guess I better run out and get some Ecodes because you said they were better. Oh, and I wasn't 10 feet from the garage, I was 6.

Don't use Hellas...Are they better then stock? Yes way better...Cibes are far better then them though...A little more money but like someone else said before....If its going to maybe save your life is it worth another 30 or 40 bucks? I think so. Do some research if you don't believe me...Its something that you get what you pay for.

bbaker80 said:

Why not just go E-code? I run Silverstars in my car simply because the EDM headlights are $950 a pair for non HID, and the HID version is over $1200. The XJ sports Hella E-code buckets with Hella halogen bulbs. Currently I have a pair of pretty high wattage bulbs (maybe 115/90) but even with a stock 65/55 bulb the difference is huge. Think about how a flashlight works. You have the same bulb no matter how you focus the light, but as you adjust it from flood to spot, more and more light is in the useable range. The same thing happens when you move to an E-code. The design of the lamp housing itself focuses the light into a more useable pattern. Straight from the Susquehanna Motorsports description :

Click to expand...

I hate it when people say stuff like "oh man...you should have bought XXX. They are sweet." I was all happy with my new lights, and you just ruined my parade. We have deer...but they may as well be dogs. They're tiny. I guess I saw a trophy buck last year as far as FL deer go, but I let it walk on by because I thought it was too small. My hunting friends are still mad at me for that one. Ahh well.... Sorry for calling you names.

Wow, flame me for trying to suggest a better way to do something. I'm not exactly sure where I offended you but I guess it's not my money so whatever.

For what it's worth even a Haynes of Chiltons manual says to park 25 feet from a wall when adjusting headlights. At 6 feet any light will produce a pattern much like the one you have posted pictures of. As far as you not caring about the color, you yourself said the Silverstar is whiter. And comparing the light on the right to the light on the left is only fair if you are comparing lamps of the same wattage from the same manufacturer of the same age. I doubt that you bought a new standard halogen lamp to compare the pattern to the new Silverstar.

Go ahead and rag on someone who offers information and see what you can learn. I suppose with that attitude you should bow to the entire XJ community, seeing as every one of us knows a little something that might be helpful to someone else, including yourself. I applaud your mature demeanor and now bow to you as you enlighten me with your wit and humor.

DrMoab said:

Don't use Hellas...Are they better then stock? Yes way better...Cibes are far better then them though...A little more money but like someone else said before....If its going to maybe save your life is it worth another 30 or 40 bucks? I think so. Do some research if you don't believe me...Its something that you get what you pay for.

Click to expand...

I don't doubt that Cibes are better than Hellas, but at the time I was buying E-codes I wasn't aware Cibes even existed. It was a choice between IPF and Hella, and from what I gathered the housings were about the same quality wise, and the Hellas were less money. If I still drove the XJ to and from the trail I'd consider changing, but at this point pretty much anything would be sufficent seeing as how the XJ only pulls trail duty.

You must have missed the point when I said that I already had the silverstars installed. The comparison on the garage was to show the difference in the wiring that I had just completed. I.E. learn to read. I even bought both of the lights at the same time, and used them for the same amount of time.
And as far as my previous lights go...if you would read my first post, you would know that I took those out LAST night...because they sucked so bad. The pattern on those lights looked like somebody was holding a candle out my window. So take your "theories of the flashlight" and shove it.

kmagnuss_2000 said:

You must have missed the point when I said that I already had the silverstars installed. The comparison on the garage was to show the difference in the wiring that I had just completed. I.E. learn to read. I even bought both of the lights at the same time, and used them for the same amount of time.
And as far as my previous lights go...if you would read my first post, you would know that I took those out LAST night...because they sucked so bad. The pattern on those lights looked like somebody was holding a candle out my window. So take your "theories of the flashlight" and shove it.

Click to expand...

So much anger over nothing. Quit the personal attacks, I don't see why they are nessecary. I didn't say you should have bought XXX, somebody told me they are sweet, I was simply conveying my personal experience. I thought that was what this forum was for. If you can't accept the fact that there are people here who know things you don't, leave.

Changing the voltage into the lights will not improve the "cleanliness" of the beam as per your definition of the word. The focus of the pattern cannot change without changing the reflector. That is where you had me confused. I assumed that because you were talking about how much better the pattern of the light was that you had installed a new lamp with the wiring. If you wish to speak of a candle instead of a flaslight, I can handle that. If you just took out the one candle power ebay lights last night, great. You actually speak of purchasing the Silverstars in your first post, so again I appoligize for using knowledge against you.