Hi all,

I have a 2003 Lincoln Navigator that was imported into the uk around 2005. I bought the car last year and am baffled regarding the headlight bulbs.

The previous owner at somepoint had the low beam bulbs changed and had a connection spliced into the harness to allow the 'wrong' bulbs to be fitted into the headlight.

I bought set of 9006 headlight bulbs as per my manual but they just will not fit in the headlight and just sort flop about in the hole......

As the 'correct' bulb doesn't fit I am wondering whether the car origianlly came with HID bulbs and that the previous owner didn't want to pay to repair or replace a faulty one and decided to go for a cheap bodge.

My question is how can I go about confirming whether HID's should be fitted?

I have taken some photos of my fittings and also what i think may be the original hid ballast in the hope that one of you may be able to shed some light on my problem.

THanks in advance
jay

 

This is the connection for the bulb that 9006 bulb will not fit



It's hard to see but the wiring from the light runs into the funny looking box bang in the middle of the photo. Not sure how to draw an arrow on to it!

 

do you have the old bulbs to match up at a parts store? and just replace with the "wrong" bulb. it looks to me like the orignal owner may have had aftermarket leds or hids installed, and removed them after selling and just spliced in a headlight connector he had laying around. if not you should be able to buy the proper 9006 connectors at a local parts store and install them instead. hope this helps!!

 

HI Zackanderson,

Thanks for your reply. I have the bulbs but the problem is the lights were really poor to begin with and that's what triggered me to replace them with more powerful ones. It made me wonder if the headlight unit itself was replaced at somepoint and that the replacements are specific to hid's and as such will only produce enough light if hid's are used.

Because of the fitting the bulbs have never sat in the housing properly which adds to the poor lighting.

Does anyone by any chance have a photo of the back of their lights? It might help me work out what is going on!

Thanks again

Jay

 

 

not sure if that helps!

 

Thanks again Zack!

So things have progressed. I removed the full headlight assembly and found that they are indeed intended for HID headlights. The ballast casing had been modified to accept clear sidelights that had been drilled into the bottom of the housing (uk law states we must have clear sidelights whereas in the us you guys have amber).

Seems a stupid way to have done it personally. It makes more sense to re-wire the amber running lights to become the turn signal and the indicator to become the sidelights.....unless I'm missing something

So now I am after a full set of HIDs and ballast. Does anyone know where I can get some or what decent aftermarket set would do the job?

Thanks again!

 

I've heard nothing but excellent reviews for DDM Tuning

Yes, I agree that swapping the turn signal and running lights' functions would have been a far simpler answer.

You might also consider LED bulbs too. Just out of curiosity, were you required to convert to RHD ECE compliant housings?

 

The owner before the one I bought it from had it converted so I'm not sure. I'm wondering whether the car didn't originally come with hids but these are replacement headlights that were purchased to conform to the 'rhd' headlights you refer to and just happened to be designed for hids.

If t didn't originally have hids will it still be a simple plug and play set up to install them?

I've also got an intresting reverse light as the previous owner claims the mot centre refused to pass the original ones as they were positioned too high for the uk mot standards..... Going to reinstate the originals and see what the next not centre says as I've never noticed a navigator over here using a different reverse light!