I'm in the finishing stages of restoring my 2001 F250 Superduty 7.3L Lariat. The new motor, Transmission and back axle has less than 200 miles clocked ; the original motor had 360,000 plus miles but still had a bit of life left in her before the engine swap. I've recovered all the seats and installed new carpet and swapped out the OEM radio for a Jensen Car8000 with four new speakers and 10-inch monitor for navigation. I installed Airlift airbag suspension system with compressor and a new gooseneck hitch from the ground with jack stands and without a vehicle lift and I can tell you, the job almost killed me. Torquing the bolts on the hitch on my back from the ground proved to be really difficult but the satisfaction of the completed job was well worth it. On the front end of the truck, I converted to 2004 style lights and grille and installed a set of Harley style headlights from Sinister Diesel. To complement the headlights, I purchased a set of GTR Ultra 2.0 LED bulbs from Headlight Revolution and also purchased the optional anti-flicker and resistor harnesses. I was excited to see the headlights beam at night but I noticed a problem right after the install.
The GTR Ultra bulbs are bright AF but there was no significant difference between low beam and high beam. In fact, I had my wife toggle between low/high beam and nothing really happened except for a little flicker as each beam was activated. I've been troubleshooting the problem for a few days now, even purchasing a new multifunction switch and removing the wire taps that powered the running lights on the upgraded mirrors. Furthermore, I swapped out the OEM headlight pigtails to a set of H13 connectors but this had no positive effect either. I'm thinking the bulbs are not compatible with my setup or are somehow damaged because the backup halogen bulbs I purchased switch between low/high beam as they should. I've read several posts on this site regarding LED conversions and one user touched on a similar problem but no real fix was revealed in the threads. I've contacted Customer Service at HR and they agreed to RMA the items they recommended for my year truck but I'm still left wondering if LED bulbs will work on this vehicle. With that said, has anyone come across this problem with no change in low/high beam after installation of LED bulbs in an older vehicle and is there a workaround for the problem?
Please see video here:

 

Do you have the LED bulb oriented properly? The diodes should be pointing to 3 and 9 o’clock. Any other direction and it could affect the beam pattern.

 

Yes, I clocked the bulbs to 3-9 o'clock position. I'm thinking it's the pins on the new pigtails I spliced to the factory headlight harness do not match the H13 connector on the light. Some of the literature I've read indicates the ground wire on the H13 connector is in the center with high/low beam either side of the ground depending on which way the connector is orientated whereas the ground wire on the factory harness is on one side with high/low beam next to each other. My mistake was cutting off the factory connector and splicing directly to the new H13 pigtail connector without taking note of the wiring; I found out the hard way that wiring color on some of these pigtails does not mean much when splicing old hardware to new hardware. I'm almost sure there's a wiring crossover needed from one harness to the other which may also account for the high beam staying partially illuminated when in low beam. I'm not an auto electrician by any means but have a few tools on hand to do some testing with help from the Youtubes.

 

"swapped out the OEM headlight pigtails to a set of H13 connectors but this had no positive effect either."

Double check that those pigtails are wired properly. I had a similar problem when I converted mine and finally discovered that the pigtails were wired incorrectly. Once I swapped the spades in the connectors to the right spots, all was well. I had a small thread about it around that time that might help or at least give some ideas.

 

Yes, I found your previous posts on the topic last night and so I went to the salvage yard this morning and picked up a set of factory pigtails from a similar F250 of the same year as mine. I plan on splicing them onto my truck harness tonight. I also ordered the 9007 - H13 conversion pigtails from from Riffraff and they will be shipped overnight to my location. I managed to fix the high beam indicator light which was on whether high/low beam was selected; the ground wire in the harness was pinned incorrectly. With all that said, I should have the wiring problem fixed tomorrow when the conversion pigtails arrive from Riffraff but I still think the GTR Ultra 2.0 LED bulbs will not work on my truck despite all the extra anti flicker and resistor harnesses. I guess I'll know for sure tomorrow.

 

FWIW, mine was a problem with a set of conversion pigtails. The wiring was backwards in them, not the original pigtail. The high-beam indicator always on was a symptom I had too. Sounds like you are on the right track.

 

Interested in this as the wife's Excursion has high and low beam lights that work correctly. My F350 has no high beam lights...stays on low beams...when the high beam is selected on the switch. The only thing I can think of as aforementioned is the the Excursion has the original light socket wiring with the older clear 2003 headlight units, though I did have to wire in new pigtails from my truck given hers were somewhat burnt. On my truck I converted to the newer Harley style 2005 headlight units, so I had to wire in the newer pigtails. Is there a difference in the way they're wired?

 

The ground wire on the new H13 pigtail connector I spliced to the headlight harness on the truck was pinned differently from the original 9007 / 9008 connector. So with that, I wired it wrong! I hastily, cut off the factory connectors from the truck harness before fully thinking it through and then threw those things right in the bin. Then I screwed around for two days connecting the new pigtails in different configurations because I couldn't get the LED bulbs to function correctly. I foolishly followed the wiring color on the new pigtails and spliced the black wire from the truck headlight harness to a black wire on the pigtail. The black wire on the new pigtail is not necessarily the ground wire, the blue wire is the ground wire on this connector. Anywho, I wired it wrong several times after that and decided to try a different route. I got me some OEM 9007 /9008 pigtail connectors from a junked F250 at the salvage yard and spliced them to my headlight harness on the truck to at least get back to a starting point. I knew the wiring color on the connectors I snagged at the salvage yard would be identical to the wiring color on the truck headlight harness. (I got two sets of these pigtails in case one broke during installation and you can have the other set if you want to do what I done to fix the problem.) Next, I found some nicely built conversion harness pigtail connectors at Riffraff that connects the 2001 type 9007/9008 connector to the 2005 H13-type connector on the new LED bulbs and hooked everything up; the GTR Ultra bulbs plus anti flicker and resistor harnesses. When I switched on the lights, everything worked as they should; high beams, low beams, and fog lights. The stuck, high-beam indicator light on the dash also works as it should.