Crummy headlights - Can't see, need upgrade
My old 2007 GMC has never had the best headlights. Driving from Lethbridge to Calgary last night I was really cussing them. Old original factory headlights and I cannot see worth a darn. They are...
Forum Discussion
Gdetrailer wrote:
First and foremost, measure the voltage AT THE BULB!
If your GM is as bad as Fords headlights one the the best upgrades you can do is bypass the OEM wiring with a relay kit.
OEM wiring is barely up to the task, often they will use 18 ga wire to the headlights and when you add up the wire length by the time the voltage reaches the headlights the bulb is only getting about 11V!
You can buy or built your own headlight relay kit, I have made my own using $2.00 30A Bosch relays and 10 ga wire (relay kit goes under hood near battery and you can get replacement harness repair parts to make it plug and play setup.. Plug the input of the relays into one of the headlight connections and the outputs of the relays to your headlights.. connect relay kit to 12V power and ground and now you have full battery voltage.. Basically about 25% improvement in brightness.
I would recommend avoiding LED replacement bulbs in any OEM style or aftermarket housing, quality is spotty at best, some have fans that will eventually fail, some the drivers make a lot of Radio interference and worst of all, LEDs cannot fully simulate the position of the filament making getting a good pattern that doesn't blind on coming traffic difficult to impossible.
Not to mention typically those LED retrofits use LEDs in blueish color temps of 6,000K-6,500K which results in harsh shadows and depending on your eyesight may make your vision even more difficult.
Try building headlight relay kit first, if that doesn't work well, add on an aux driving lights or fog lights (that is what I did for my 97 Ford BEFORE I figured out the headlight bulbs were not getting full battery voltage), those lights were like using a candle)..
That's a great tip, thanks. I never thought about checking the voltage at the lights. I do recall looking at the size of the wiring once, thinking to myself it looked a little on the lame side.
I used to put relays, do the wiring and put aircraft landing lights on my old vehicles. Boy did those ever poke a hole into the night!
Illegal though, got busted a couple times so I stopped using them......
