Hi!

I am thinking about going HID for my headlights. However there does not seem to be a definitive guide regarding them and the current SDs. What I know.

HID require some additional wiring up due to the ballasts for the lamps.

There are several color choices for the lamps.

Housings. Which ones? There are several designs out there.

Weekend warrior project? How long should a set take to install?

Considered illegal in some areas. I noticed many people say keep the stock housings and upgrade the bulbs. (Did this but the actual increase of light was minimal.)

What about the fog lights? Suggestions?

If you got pictures, please post up as well.

Yes intentionally made this post this way. What else do I need to know.

Thanks!

 

Lots of options, lots of misinformation, lots of rumor and speculation out there. I'm biding my time, hoping the 2015 Super Duty lineup will feature a factory OEM option that I can then just bolt on in place of my 2011 light housings. They look great on the F150's and the GM trucks. I haven't seen any evidence that Ford will wake up and add an HID option for 2015, so we'll see.

What you need to know is that to do it right is not cheap. If you're paying a hundred or two hundred bucks for a kit, then the only thing you can say for that kit is that it's cheap. It may or may not work when you get it plugged in or a few months down the line. It almost certainly won't be designed correctly. Quality stuff is expensive because of precision and durability. Cheap stuff is inexpensive because it lacks precision and durability, both of which are things you kind of want out of what you use to see at night. Like most things, that's not to say that you can't possibly get lucky and get something cheap that accidentally ended up being right, because even with low QA standards even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every once in a while. But don't expect it. This is one area where you don't get more than you pay for, but you don't necessarily get all of what you pay for either.

You can just stick HID bulbs in your OEM halogen reflector housings, but beware. Cheap bulbs might be a millimeter off and thus throw an incorrect light pattern, resulting in anything from poor lighting of the road to blinded oncoming traffic. Even high quality bulbs will probably make you aim your lights a little lower. The 2011+ housings have a better cut-off than previous models, but still aren't really intended for HIDs.

Reflectors, projectors, and bulbs are designed to very detailed specifications so that the light is bounced and focused the right way to give you good results and to keep other people from being blinded, whether in oncoming traffic or in their rearview mirrors. Cheap crap doesn't take that into account, and almost everything out there on the market is cheap crap, because it can be hard to tell the difference just by seeing a picture on the internet, and most people don't really care. Most HID kits are like people who stack up several blocks under their rear springs, forgo a ladder bar, and are pleased with themselves. "My truck looks bad ***, bro!" Just something to be aware of.

As far as housings, I don't know if I've seen document it on a 2011+ Super Duty, but the proper way to do HIDs when you don't have an OEM option (why not, Ford??) is to get someone else's OEM projector lenses and "retrofit" them into your reflector housings. If you're good with arts and crafts and a wrench, it's apparently not all that difficult to do, and there are plenty of write-ups out there covering how to do it with various different models, but it's pretty much all the same: cut a hole in your housing and glue the projector lens in there where the halogen bulb used to be. Everything else you can buy as a replacement housing seems to be some sort of backwards-upside-down-visor wearing frat bro x-treme blinged out obnoxious silliness with halos and LEDs and whatever else they can cram on there around cheap plastic projector lenses. I'm not really wanting to have my truck bedazzled, so even there were one of half way decent quality, that wouldn't be the one for me.

As far as colors are concerned, the higher the number, the more ricer-ish it is, with blueish to eventually violet light. The lower the number, the more "warm" the light is, till you get to sodium lamp yellow. If at all possible, stick to 4300k to 5000k which is a nice middle ground. 5000k is as "white" as you can go before being tinted blue, and anything below 4300k starts to look pretty yellow. Unless you're so fast and furious that purple lights appeal to you, in which case I guess let your flag fly.

Don't worry about whether someone tells you it's legal or illegal. They're probably not in your area, and even if they are, they're probably just regurgitating something they heard from this guy who knows because he's friends with some dude. If you're really concerned about it, look it up. Talk to the guys at inspection stations near where you are, ask a cop or two, and see what they say. Cops aren't lawyers and don't necessarily know the law, so even if it's not "illegal" (like too dark a tint is "illegal") they may have heard the same mumbo jumbo and think they should write you a ticket for it. If so, it's good to know that going in.

Fog lights are generally fairly easy to deal with: just replace the bulbs with HID bulbs. If it satisfies, great!

 

I put HID's in my stock housings honestly only reason i still have them is becasue i paid for them, the light output wasnt much of an increase even after switching to 55w ballasts. Personally get a projector housing or do a retrofit into your current one. 02TB250 did one to his truck and it came out great! check out his thread here https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...ld-thread.html

 

I've had a 2001 without HID and bought a kit. The light was blueish after that but I can't say that it actually made me see any better.

I also got a 2005 MDX without HID and a 20008 MDX with factory HID. Whiter light but not seeing any better.

It's a marketing gimmick, like argon air in your tires. A way to get money from people who can afford it and think it will give them something more.

 

I do have to say though Projectors vs the stock lighting in these trucks is a big improvement though. I think my result is base don the fact that in high school I was trying to show off and be flashy so i got 8k which is blue instead of 6k which is more white. My 95 has 6k HID's (great improvement btw because of the fogged lights) and the 6k illuminates better and i can see more, even with my headlights aimed down so i don't blind people. But my 04 and 05 lights that i had i couldn't see crap in front of me...if it was raining for get it i might as well turn the lights off because they didn't shine on anything but street signs and they were properly aimed with new silver star bulbs.

 

I'll be writing up a build thread on mine when i get it done. I'm in the process of getting mine to stop interfering with my DP tuner. Here is the thread on that.
https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...al-issues.html

I threw a couple of pics in there of my setup. It's definitely not cheap if you wanna do it right. I have about $650 in my setup. I wanted to retain a semi stock look so i went with CT perfomance retrofit projector headlamps.

 

i put in 55w heads n fogs. cost me well over 300$. great improvement. spent about an hour after to adjust them properly.

 

If you take a loom at my thread I went the retrofit option. I knew that the housings on all super duties are not really great as far as light output, so I switched to the 05-07 which I like better and retrofitted h1 projectors with 4300k bulbs. Vast and awesome improvement. if your really looking for HIDs theres really only 1 way to do it.

 

The biggest thing I would stress its that you are aware of the radio frequency interference that installing HID's can cause. I just spoke to Jody at DP tuner about my issue, and he told me how the HID's can affect other things and not just tuners. He said he has seen one HID kit that freaked out the CPS and it ended up blowing the motor. Also, he mentioned the same thing with a mustang that had HID's that interfered with the MAF and caused the engine to run lean and that engine blew as well. Just beware that when you do this, there is a potential for problems. I am in the process of moving all my components as far forward as I can get them(header panel), and also hooking everything up to the passenger side battery, and installing ferrite beads on both my tuner and HID harness.

 

I had something similar happen to me with my HID kit, when i would turn them on my ABS light would come on for about 3 seconds then turn off and stay off. Only when the lights were turned of but it stopped doing that about a 6 months ago now...never understood why it just stopped but i knew what why it was happening.

 

The only interference I've encountered is with my radio which I expected, and I'll be trying out those ferrishields to see if it will help. Granted my truck is old and simple. So I don't know if you'll have the same luck. However I have no phantom lights or miss fires or any other symptoms since the install.

 

If you buy a properly engineered kit there should be no impedance issues at all as the emf would be controlled properly.
Ferret rings should help or you could coil a wire around the harness length (think like taping your harness with electrical tape) and the ground it to the truck and that should do it as well.

It true though that to do it correctly you have to drop a big chunk of change....but I know that the lights on my 08 F450 as so poor that I'm exploring options as we'll.....

 

Don't think I would spend time resources on HID. But I would spend $260 on projectors. I've supplemented stock lights with KC's for off road high beam use and there great but low beams need help still. Projects are best value for $$ IMO.

 

Hi,

Thanks for the info so far. Learned a few things I was unaware of like EMI from the HID ballasts. I might have my buddy look into it for me as well since he does this stuff for a living.

02TB250 nice write up on your truck. very cool.

 

If you're doing 55 watt, go with a 5,000K. Generally 55 watt will "bleed" the light down a bit. It's well known that 4300K is the best light output. Almost every vehicle out there uses a 35 watt 4300K HID if its equipped with them. For fog lamps I would not recommend using a 55 watt. The housings are too small for that kind of heat. Besides, there's no need for 55 watt fogs.