Modify Autopal housings? Beam pattern too narrow.

Has anyone attempted to modify the autopal h4 conversion housings? I have been happy with the light they put out for the most part, but the lighting to the sides leaves something to be desired. I was looking at them pretty good to see why they didnt reflect much out the sides and realized that the hood that covers the front of the bulb wraps around the side enough to prevent a lot of the light from spreading in a wide pattern. The back of that hood is not a reflector by anymeans, so the light that hits it is just wasted. I was considering either removing that hood completely or trying to cut slots in it on either side to allow a wider dispersal of light. Any thoughts?

I was thinking the same thing. I put in some silverstar BULBS, which helped a little but I would still like to see some improvement.

One of the autopal housings I have does not have the hood, it came like this. I like it better than the others. I have/had them on both of my cherokees. I was a little surprised to see that a small bird busted out one of my autopal housings though.

Well I pulled them out of both of my housings. I compared one with the hood out, and the original one and the one with the hood out seemed have a wider, fuller beam. Doing it to both seemed to help quite a bit, especially on the brights. Before when turning at fulll lock, whether in high beam or low, You couldt see what you were turning into worth a dang. (thats been my only complaint about the autopals. By taking the hood off, it made it so there is some pretty good light that shoots really wide. It should help in tight turns quite a bit. Pulling them out was really easy with a pair of needle nose pliers. Just be careful not to hurt the reflector.

In doing this, I did realize that the autopal glass is pretty thin, so it doesnt surprise me at all that a bird was able to break it.

Between this mod and building a harness out of 10awg wiring,,,, my lighting is substantially better than it was 2 days ago.

OH,, i did notice that when 10 feet from the side of my house, there is some light that shines above the cutoff line. (Which didnt change by the way, the cutoff is determined by shield in the bulb and not the bulb hood Im talking about.) It is very faint but you can tell it is there. Its light coming directly from the bulb so its not intense at all so its not an issue.

hood?

Its in the first post, the hood that covers the front of the bulb.

so did you remove it completely or just cut it and put it back in ? if you removed it does it have any effect on other drivers being blinded ir anything ?

I removed it completely. I never got flashed before, and havent got flashed since. As mentioned earlier, there is now a tiny bit of light above the cutoff line, but not even enough to illuminate the side of my house above the cutoff line from about 15 feet away. Theres just barely enough to tell its there.

From all of my searching for pictures of autopal housings, I found some that had the hood and some that didnt and figured if there were some that were engineered without them, it couldnt be that bad to remove them. My only regret now is that there are two holes where the hood mounted that obviously dont have reflectors. If I could do it again I would definately try and find ones that didnt have the hood in there originally and without the city lights.