The headlights on my wife 06 mountaineer have ALWAYS been very dim. The lenses are clear and I replaced them with silverstar ultras and that didnt improve anything at all. I put hids in the fogs and that helped a little. Heres my questions:

Any way to keep the fogs on with high beams?

Are there aftermarket projector headlights for mountaineers?

If I put hids in the stock housings and use bi-xenon, would the high beam actually shine further?

Would using a relay brighten the stockers up a lot and any info on making one?

 

Are they aimed properly?

 

Are they aimed correctly is the #1 issue. I have encounters lots of vehicles that had headlights that were not aimed correctly from the factory.

Secondly, there is a difference between actual usable brightness and the perception of brightness. For example, Silverstars appear to be brighter but are anywhere from 15% - 30% dimmer than conventional bulbs.

Thirdly, no bulb reaches its rated brightness unless it gets the full rated power. Direct Current (the type your car runs off of) looses a lot of voltage for each foot of distance traveled. This is exaggerated when resistance is encounters, things like low gauge wire, poor connectors, and switches. Almost all factory systems cause enough voltage drop due to all of these problems that a 20% - 30% increase in brightness can be observed by installing a relay harness kit. These kits bypass much of the stock wiring, and provide a more direct route for power to get to the bulbs. This in turn causes dramatic increases in brightness, while still staying within the legal limits.

It is illegal to put HID bulbs in a halogen housing. Understanding the differences between the HID and halogen light sources themselves and how the two systems gather and focus the light explains why. HID has already become illegal in most European countries (the same countries where the HID revolution originated) because it has been determined beyond all reasonable doubt that HIDs create an illusion that the driver can see better than the actually can, and that HIDs blind other drivers. The end result is an increase in collisions and accidents caused by poor visibility.