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Does anyone have experience with, or could point me in the right direction, for retrofitting true LED or HID projectors into our headlight assembly?
I have looked at new chicom headlight assemblies with "projector" housings, but I know these are cheap and not correct. I know the general jist that you need to unseal the headlights and mount the projectors, but I would appreciate any guidance people may have.
Morimoto are the top tier projector kits. They are pricey though you get what you pay for sometimes. There are many knockoffs along the same lines to choose from.
@FordTruckNoob installed some sealed beam style LED lights into his housing, but that was the opposite of plug and play and needed a lot if custom work.
A lot of us have gone with 02 - 04 clear lens housing, wiring/relay harness and a pair of 80/100 bulbs. @SkySkiJason is a big fan of Hella for the bulbs at near $5 a piece.
There are plug and play housings available, but they seem to be a bit if a gamble and are hit and miss regarding functionality, beam pattern and overall results. There are quite a few threads about this very topic. If you need help with the search function (not very useful), I can help you out in a bit by linking a few threads.
Custom headlights are very challenging, even for expert builders, to get it perfect every time. Condensation in the assembly being the number one complaint. If you do decide to purchase a custom set make sure the warranty fully covers that issue.
I know the general jist that you need to unseal the headlights and mount the projectors, but I would appreciate any guidance people may have.
Yeah, that's the short version. The Morimoto Bi-Led are amazingly bright...so you had better get them aimed correctly. I spent a fair amount of time with a laser level....mapped out the driveway 25' from the garage door so that I could have the truck level when I aimed them. Also figured out getting the truck perpendicular to the door to get the left-right aim correct...then adjusted so that the cut-off was 3" below the centerline of the headlight at 25'. The 05-07 headlights don't have left-right adjusters on them, so your retrofit needs to be pretty close...you can shim the housing with some washers to get the beam aligned.
There are probably 100’s of options for retrofitting ‘modern’ fixtures into our old headlight housings and anyone crafty enough could probably pull it off. The problem is putting something else into old, foggy housings isn’t going to help much.
Yes, the chinesey garbage is just that - JUNK. Most never work well right out of the box and return an unsatisfying service life.
My go to preference is the OE-style clear headlight lenses, a relay harness and 100/80watt bulbs. I’ve put this combo in literally DOZENS of trucks and everyone is satisfied with that light output (including oncoming traffic). For those who desire MORE, I recommend investing in separate driving and or fog lights. There are some great products that put light waaaaaay down the road if you need it - but they are not the ever-popular ‘light bars’ all the brah’s are running these days....
This is the style lens I prefer (stock ‘02-04)
If you are committed to a modern light option, consider retrofitting something like this into a fresh set of headlight housings.
As @Sous mentioned, I worked some sealed beam LEDs into the aero housings. It was recently discussed in a similar thread. Here are some quotes from it:
Originally Posted by FordTruckNoob
If you want a somewhat plug-n-play solution, you can switch to sealed beams and mount Trucklites like Colorado350 did.
I had a hard time finding sealed beam mounting hardware so I shoehorned some LED sealed beam units into Aero housings.
Originally Posted by Y2KW57
Well, we can do a write up right here, with a Q & A.
1. How hot do the aero plastic housings get with the LED sealed beam inside of them?
2. How much condensation, if any, fogs the space between the inside of the aero lens cover and the LED sealed beam face?
3. Have you had to sand and polish any plastic lens crazing on the aero housings you are using?
4. Have you ever been flashed? (By other drivers, not secret admirers)
5. How did you "focus" your LED sealed beams, and secure them into that position to maintain the focus you set?
Originally Posted by FordTruckNoob
Okay, let's give it a shot.
Not hot at all. All heat rejection is achieved via the back of the sealed beam unit (which is an aluminum heatsink), which is exposed to ambient air after the shoehorning.
None whatsoever. I was careful to blow the cavity out with dry air before sealing the edges. I also left the completed headlights in a warm dry environment for 48 hours before installing in the vehicle.
No I did not. The housings I used to create were fairly new at the time so they were still in good shape.
No, I have not been flashed by other drivers. No comment on flashing by FansofTheNoob (aka FTN also).
That is the beauty of the sealed beams. They come properly focused for the light from each LED element to project where it is supposed to. It does not rely on the reflectors of the aero housings whatsoever. In fact, I polished the reflective surface of the aero housing (what was left of it after cutting the back out for the sealed beam unit) to remove the chrome coating. Another thing to point out is that I was careful to cut the backs of the aero housings out WITHOUT ALTERING THE FACTORY SCREW-ADJUSTING MOUNTS. This allows the headlight housings to be adjusted normally. The trick is to mount the sealed beam unit such that it projects light within the range of the adjusters. To that end I used a datum to determine the plane to cut in the back of the housing. I will need pictures to explain.
I feel this is where all the aftermarket LED 9007 bulbs fail to perform. They rely on the aero housings' reflector which is completely wrong for the placement of the LED element.
As for how I secured the sealed beams into the housing, a whole lot of epoxy resin, carbon fiber reinforcing fabric and polycarbonate-specific cyanoacrylate adhesives were used.
If/When these burn out, I will probably do the Morimoto LED projectors like @Dan V did.
If you don't want to go too deep into the custom retrofitting, switching to the old school sealed beam buckets that came stock on the base model trucks is the easiest way to get a well made LED light source. JW Speaker is the high buck option. The Truckltes are also decent. Xenon HID is needlessly fussy and complicated when modern LED setups work nearly as well and are much simpler.
@Dan V Do you have any pictures of how your lights look from the front?
As far as the relay goes with the OE style housings, is this just to use the original light wire to trigger a new relay that is directly tied to the battery? Does this actually increase light intensity?
My goal is to be able to see down the road farther, living in the Midwest everything is pretty much flat and where I drive it cars are typically few and far between at night. The OEM lights aren't bright enough, for my liking, and do not project wide enough or far enough.
Would I be better off running a LED light in the fog light locations to get the distance, and then put a bar tucked in the center for the wide beam?
If you don't want to go too deep into the custom retrofitting, switching to the old school sealed beam buckets that came stock on the base model trucks is the easiest way to get a well made LED light source. JW Speaker is the high buck option. The Truckltes are also decent. Xenon HID is needlessly fussy and complicated when modern LED setups work nearly as well and are much simpler.
I was looking to go this route, but I was unable to find all the adjuster components for the sealed beam lamps.
I have a lightbar with both wide and projected beams. It is tucked back into the hole far enough and tilted so that there is not any upwardglare.
This picture is from way back before I did the sealed beam LEDs in aero housings.
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