New Headlight Assemblies

Hey there,
I'm looking for suggestions on new headlight assemblies for a 1990. Even after changing bulbs, my lights just aren't bright enough for me to comfortably drive at night, even with high beams on. I live in deer country and would like to make a change.

Thanks.

Are your current light housings hazed or yellowed? Some good plastic polish and a little elbow grease should make them like new again(if they're very badly hazed, you might need to wet-sand them with some 1500-grit first). The haze is typically on the outside surface (caused by the sun), so you should be able to polish it clear again.
Otherwise, I would suggest OEM-style replacement housings and (optionally) some higher-wattage clear halogen bulbs. I've also seen replacement housings that have a clear front lens with a patterned reflector to create the correct light beam, though I don't have personal experience with those.
Avoid the temptation of switching to LED bulbs though (or to any type of tinted halogen bulbs too for that matter), they may seem extremely bright up close, but all that brightness up close causes glare (constricting the pupils in your eyes) and reduces distance illumination compared with clear halogen bulbs.

Another option would be a set of auxiliary driving lights wired on a relay to come on with your high-beams. This is probably the best way to go if deer are a problem (together with polishing/replacing your stock housings). Hella makes some excellent halogen and HID aux lights that can throw a light beam thousands of feet down a dark rural road, even illuminating reflectors over a mile away (I fairly recently put a pair of their Rallye 4000 Compact lights (pt# 009094181) on my '90... Awesome stuff).

I replaced my assemblies with new Dorman assemblies. Part numbers 1590205 and 1590204 from rockauto. Good price, easy swap.

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4x4junkie said:

Avoid the temptation of switching to LED bulbs though (or to any type of tinted halogen bulbs too for that matter), they may seem extremely bright up close, but all that brightness up close causes glare (constricting the pupils in your eyes) and reduces distance illumination compared with clear halogen bulbs.

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I would completely agree if you were talking about putting HID bulbs in a Halogen housing, but not sure I can do so when talking about LEDs.

In my 99 I personally went from standard Halogen to Silvania Silverstar bulbs in the stock housings and had a noticeable improvement. Later installed aftermarket housings with clear lenses and molded reflectors like you described above due to fogged lenses. Tried standard halogen bulbs in new housings, and they weren't doing the job, so swapped back to the silverstar bulbs with a noticeable improvement.

Last month I noticed some good LED bulbs on sale at Amazon so I decided to give them a try. I say good basing that off the actual CREE LEDs used in the bulbs, not based on a bulb brand or marketing claims. These LED bulbs have a little more blue tint than I like, but I can definitely see down the road better with them. So far I haven't gotten any complaints from other drivers either, if at any point they fail to perform or I start getting complaints I'll be swapping back immediately.

Granted my little car with halogens still does better, but there's about 20 years difference in technology and reflector design there as well. If I could find a similar LED replacement bulb with a little more neutral tint, I'd love to try them in the car.

JoshT said:

Last month I noticed some good LED bulbs on sale at Amazon so I decided to give them a try. I say good basing that off the actual CREE LEDs used in the bulbs, not based on a bulb brand or marketing claims. These LED bulbs have a little more blue tint than I like, but I can definitely see down the road better with them. So far I haven't gotten any complaints from other drivers either, if at any point they fail to perform or I start getting complaints I'll be swapping back immediately.

Granted my little car with halogens still does better, but there's about 20 years difference in technology and reflector design there as well. If I could find a similar LED replacement bulb with a little more neutral tint, I'd love to try them in the car.

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That is the problem. No one in the aftermarket (yet) makes LED vehicle lights with the proper tint (yes, proper-tint LED chips do exist from companies such as Cree and Philips, but no one uses them because they then can't inflate their (unregulated) marketing claims about lumens and kelvin as much even though the quality of the light (ability of the human eye to process the light) would way more than offset the 5-7% loss of claimable lumens (kelvin is not a measure of brightness, but of light color (bluish or yellowish), a higher number means more bluish, but many of the people who buy into those claims don't realize or understand that).
For LED vehicle lighting, ideal seems to be 3500-4000°K. Some OEM LED head lights on the newest cars are in the low-mid 4000s, however nearly all of the aftermarket crap (to include replacement capsules for halogen lights) are in the mid-5000s to mid-6000s.

The glare from bluish tint is actually somewhat less of an issue with HID lights.
With LEDs however, the bluish tint comes from a very intense narrow spike within the blue end of their output spectrum, and is what causes eye strain and glare. Sure, if you have enough light output, you can partially (but not fully) make up for these shortcomings, but it's still far from the ideal of having a more natural light color (not to mention color rendition is far better too).
Our eyes respond best to wavelengths between 500-600nm. As the graph attached shows, a 6000°K LED has relatively little light output there.


You mentioned the halogen lights on your other car still work better... True, optics do matter, but I would bet a simple higher wattage CLEAR bulb could make up that difference (Silverstar bulbs are somewhat brighter, but at the cost of longevity. Their glass also has a slight bluish tint which still reduces the total light output compared to an untinted bulb).

And again I say, some QUALITY halogen auxiliary lights up front would make far more of a difference than anything you could possibly do within your OEM headlight housings.

I am fully aware of what you speak. I've played around with LED lighting a lot in the past couple of years, mostly in the form of building CREE LED based flashlights and hunting lights. I know how tints should work and I do prefer a neutral white light. I am also aware of the difference between kelvin and lumens, and know full well how bad marketing claims are for light output.

None of that changes the fact that my experience with my Ranger's headlight housings = LED > Silverstar > standard halogen

I do not disagree that an auxiliary light tied into the high beams would do more than any bulb upgrade. Just hope that anyone here that opts to go that route will use them properly, people in my rural area do not. I was not talking about auxiliary lights though. Simply sharing my personal experience with LED bulbs.

Ok, cool, you understand what the differences are. Many do not however, so is why I mentioned it.

I too have already been down the LED light path myself with various LED off road lights, from the cheap no-name china crap off fleabay to quality stuff such as Rigid & Baja Designs. BD seemed to be a small cut above the others (which would make sense since they use 5000K LED chips, the lowest I've seen in aftermarket off road lights), however they still lack the throw distance and color rendering of halogen or even HID lights of similar luminosity. I went back to halogen lights mainly because HID lights interfere with reception on my 2-way radios.