Headlights. What works best.

I had to drive the G35 home in the rain the other night. The aftermarket headlights SUCK. It lights up signs quite nicely, but it doesn't throw much light down the road. So, some kind of new headlights are in order. The problem I'm running into is OEM lights are $400-$800 a side. That's not happening. There is also no way to tell if other aftermarket assemblies are any better than what I have now. 

Any ideas. Have any of you gents tried building a set of assemblies with Hella guts? Any aftermarket brands better than others. 

Talk to me. 

Hella makes a lot of those lights as OEM parts, you essentially can get any OEM headlamp gut and swap it in. Different suppliers use different attachment schemes but if you stick to that supplier brand you can generally finagle them in without much effort. 

Make sure your lens is clear too you may just need the whole re-condition lens thing but yes aftermarket parts are pretty lousy after seeing what goes into a quality headlamp product. There is a reason why they are 400-800 dollars. Mostly because the OEM marks up the parts by a factor of 7x-10 original purchase price - they just like to pass the savings onto you the consumer! post warranty consumer to be exact!

I've had luck with aftermarket lights from a reputable supplier, like Spyder. The ones I picked up for our WJ put out good light that's properly distributed.

But it's hard to beat OEM. I finally screwed up my pocketbook and picked up a set of for-real Hella OE lights for my E39 and it made a massive difference.

Unfortunately, Hella doesn't make lights for the Infinity. They do sell components for reasonable. I'm wondering if I can just build my own set using their components in the housings I have. I'll pull the lights apart when I get  home and do some measuring. 

I have a set of ballasts and bulbs for Infiniti HIDs my buddy NissanTech gave me. No housings or anything, though. I've been kicking around making them fit the ranger, but if they would help you I can send them your way. 

I'm pretty sure it has HIDs and ballasts in it now. I think the problem is the poorly designed lenses and reflectors. It puts out a good bit of light, it's just poorly distributed. SanFord has better lights than this does. 

HIDs in a crap housing are just bright crap. That's what my E39 had.

Don't take from my post that you can only use Hellas. Get yourself some OE housings. They just happen to be Hella units on the BMW.

I need to update my 94 MR2 headlights as well. AFter 14 year of ownership, really need to brighten it up. 

Toyman01 said:

Unfortunately, Hella doesn't make lights for the Infinity. They do sell components for reasonable. I'm wondering if I can just build my own set using their components in the housings I have. I'll pull the lights apart when I get  home and do some measuring. 

 

Hella generally does the German customers and some US stuff. I bet your lights are either Koito, valeo or Ichikoh given their market share on nissan products. You gotta look on the lens by the DOT markings or on the housing somewhere for the lighting mfg logo or name. The ballast is generally imposed part from the OE and has nothing to do with the light as its kind of a nitch piece for the system. 

I jammed 2018 lexus RX350 1000 lumen bi-projector LED units into my 2004 mazda6 headlamp done by Automotive Lighting (magneti Mareli) with minimal fudgery 

A pair of PAR 46 housings and H5006 bulbs would set you back @$75. Call them driving lights, wire them up as headlights. 

is there a way to retrofit a decent HID projector into your housing now? I know a lot of people where doing it with OEM projectors from junkyard cars (which give good light output/cutoff/not blinding) and fitting them to there housings.

HERE is an example of what I'm talking about with a foxbody headlight, not sure how well/easy it could be done on your housing.

I've used Morimoto projectors from The Retrofit Source with excellent results: https://www.theretrofitsource.com/. I think they have bolt in kits for Infiniti's...

Believe these are oem, could be wrong but $185 for set.

https://www.1aauto.com/2003-04-infiniti-g35-headlight-pair/i/1alhp00365?f=263177&y=2004&utm_campaign=gb_csv_br&utm_content=LHP&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIr-7Nm6q-3gIVxrjACh2O_QyzEAQYASABEgJhIPD_BwE

The oem lights on my I35 are best on anything I’ve owned, I’d try to go original if you can 

I have used the retrofit source projectors on my 4runner as well. Good stuff.

Sometimes small adjustments can make big differences in how the headlights project the beam on the roadway. 

edizzle89 said:

 

That's an entire how-to in one picture. Nice.

What I have now is some kind of projector that appears to be high and low beam. As well as what may be a fog light below it that comes on with the high beam. The housings are made by Sonar out of Taiwan. It has Race Sport Gen 4 can buss HID kits in it. It also looks like one of the projectors doesn't light off every time on low beam. 

Unfortunately I can't get the assemblies out without pulling the front bumper and grill. That's going to have to wait until this weekend. 

Everything I can find for this car is a Chinese knock off and flashy but probably not better than what I have. I'm thinking about buying some Hella projectors and installing them in these housings. 

If you've got room for 2 projectors and can fit it in the budget, I'd be tempted to do one for low/high beam and a second high beam only to get more light. 

In reply to rslifkin :

I like the way you think. 

I would look on fleabay for the European version lights to your car. I did that for my Disco and the quality of light is night and day compared to the DOT junk

I replaced the halogen bulbs with an OPT7 HID kit in my wife's '14 Impala's factory projectors and was pretty happy with them for quality and light output. The halogens were horrible, because the projector was designed for HIDs. When the OPT7 emitters blew out (within a week of each other–good QC there), I got some cheap EBay bulbs. They sucked. The color and pattern were useless.  I got some more OPT7 bulbs, and they were good again. 

Sounds like just new bulbs and ballasts could be a big improvement. 

Just saw this thread, and like mentioned above I have used Morimotos from the retrofit source with extremely good results. They are extremely good, and I own a Honda S2000 which is considered to have some of the best HID lights available.

Check out the morimoto retroquick brackets.

You'll have to get a good look inside your current lights, but 90% of all aftermarket lights use one of two styles of projector. The retroquick brackets allow you to bolt in a set of morimoto mini H1 projector housings, which perform pretty well. I'd recommend their bulb holders for the H1 based projectors as well.

Toyman01 said:

In reply to rslifkin :

I like the way you think. 

 

I generally go with "there's no such thing as too much light on high beam, provided you can put it somewhere you want to see".  The Jeep is all halogen for lights, but it's got a lot of halogen (the high beams draw a bit north of 50 amps).  Headlights are euro housings (with the much better euro beam pattern), 80w low beam, 100w high beam.  High beams also trigger a pair of Hella 4000s with 100w bulbs (in euro beam pattern, so basically a longer ranged high beam but not as tight as a pencil beam) and a pair of IPF 968s (driving beam) with 100w bulbs that are angled slightly outwards for more light around corners and for deer in empty fields.  And for bad weather, it's got a pair of yellow IPF 840 fogs with 85w bulbs.  They throw almost as far as the low beams, just without the kick up to the right in the cutoff and, well, everything becomes very yellow.  So when the weather gets too reflective, just drop to parking lights + fogs and there's still plenty of sight distance.  Or in deep snow, run them with the low beams, as the 2 different angles of light hitting the snow give better contrast to tire ruts, etc.  

It makes the stock headlights in most cars feel terribly inadequate, even compared to just my low beams (they're not as bright as a lot of factory HID projector setups, but they do a good job of placing the light and don't create the big bright splash right in front of you that kills any chance at distance vision, so they let you see much better than the apparent brightness would indicate).  Every time I drive SWMBO's Prius I consider doing a projector retrofit and strapping a bunch of lights to the front bumper...  Then I remember just how unpleasant the 2nd gen Prius really is as a car outside of low speed city traffic and decide it's not worth putting any effort into.