Well, as you guys know, I sold my HID kit earlier this week. And I miss them lots... . So i decided to find out a way to get better lighting out of the Lancer's stock headlights by only spending $50. I figured I could afford that, and its a reasonable amount for other Lancer owners to round up. My goal was to try to find a way to provide the non-HID Lancer owners to have the look and brightness of HID's without spending $300+.

After doing a few days straight of research I came to a solution. This is what I decided to do:

1) Buy a set of the best 9007 bulbs I could find, in the temp I wanted.
2) Take out the stock bulbs and throw the new ones in.
3) Rewire the headlight harness to allow more power to run through all the time.
4) Enjoy

It wasn't that easy, but once I figured out the game plan everything went amazing!

1) I bought a set of 9007 Nokei Tokyo Blue 2-Tone bulbs - $40
2) Parked the car facing a garage and marked with a piece of tape the height of the beems (for later referrence...you'll need this!)
3) Threw them in the stock bulb cradles
4) Here's where it may get confusing:
- there are 3 wires that run into the back of the bulbs: red w/stripe, black, and pink
- I cut the red one with the stripe and the pinkish one
- I then stripped the ends and cleaned them up
- using the little wire splicing things, i wired the red w/stripe that came off the back of the bulb with the pink wire coming from the wiring of the car.
- and I did the same thing with the pink wire coming from the back of the bulb with the red one with the stripe coming from the car's wiring.
5) I placed the bulbs back into the headlights and turned them on to make sure they worked still...
6) Against a garage door or wall, lower the beem back to stock hieght again.
7) Wham! You have yourself a set of headlights that look like HID's and shine almost as bright (very slight difference).

By doing this, you are essentially running your high beams all the time, and have them at a stock height and with the new bulbs they look AMAZING to say the least!

~ Nick ~

Ill take pics tonight to show you what they look like! Trust me, I had the HID's and these are just as good...seriously even Im impressed!!!

 

First of all, by doing that you are taking the low beam wire, less voltage, and putting it to the high beam filament, higher voltage. You are essentially solving nothing because you are still feeding the high beam filament the same voltage, thus making it no brighter.

Now on the other side, when you go to use your high beams, you are feeding the HIGH voltage wire to a lower voltage bulb, possibly causing damage to your harness and headlight relays.

This has to be one of the worst ideas ive heard in a while.......even worse than affixing JAF decals on your car.

If you wanted brighter lights why not just drive with yoru high beams on all the time and just adjust your headlights to the right height?

 

I'm skeptical, very skeptical, I'd like to see some pics. It doesn't seem like that would work at all. Also, post pics of your custom wiring job. Doesn't sound like it will work the way you are saying.

 

This thread is missing something...

 

???

 

sit on it fonzie

 

Im at work, so i can't shoot any pics yet. And Mark, by switching the 2 wires you are taking your high beams and leaving them running off of your normal setting, so it is like running with your high beams on all the time, except you dont have to click them on - they stay on, and the beam height is at a stock level, allowing you to have brighter (high beams) lights. Its not that hard to do, just something different.

 

the point is you are sitll giving the WRONG voltage to the bulb filament thus causing possible damage to your wiring harness and premature burning out of the bulbs.

 

 

x eleventy billion

 

 

oh so its like driving with a high beam that has been set to the low beam height? then what do u do when u want your high beams during driving? (although i never ever had the need to turn on my high beams)

 

I'll be the first to say this is a dumb idea, but at least know what you're talking about when you say that. The voltage is the same - 12V, just like everything else. The bulbs themselves (for high and low beams) will likely have different rated wattages, which means they'll draw more or less current from the wires. It's still 12 volts though.

Now as for the problems with this idea:
1. High beams are important. They aren't brighter lights, they are lights aimed higher for visibilty further down the road. That's a safety thing and I largely consider those who sacrifice safety for something so silly and cosmetic as this to be wasting money. I really don't think you should be on the road if things like this aren't at least a little important.

2. If there is a problem with running a higher wattage bulb in the stock sockets, then there are two potential problems you'll see. The new bulbs will blow a fuse or melt the wiring. And really, they won't melt the wiring unless you put a bigger fuse in there because that's what fuses are designed to prevent. If the light goes on without blowing the fuse, then the wire can carry the current fine, as can the entire circuit.

3. The problem you may face here has nothing to do with wiring. If the higher wattage bulbs draw too much current, you may find your alternator not able to reliably output the power necessary. This probably won't be the case unless you're running lots of audio equipment too (>600W or so is probably where you start to see issues here). If the headlights flicker with the bass, then you need a bigger alternator. A cap may suffice to retard a small problem with this, but a larger alternator will be necessary if this is too overboard.

4. The other problem with the higher wattage bulb will be heat dissipation. Lights, especially halogens are not efficient. Only about 10-20% (I think) of the power goes to visible light - the rest goes to heat. That heat will be melting your headlight housing before any problems surface with wiring and fuses.

5. On the bright side, you'll hit a deer at night for lack of high beams long before you melt a headlight or its fuse/wiring, so you should probably never notice any of this.
-N

 

Neil,

he isnt using higher wattage bulbs, he is using the stock bulbs..........instead of the word voltage I used I should have used current now that I go back and look.


As far as the bigger altenator needed for headlights? i dont think so.

he would have the wrong current draw out of the headlight relay tho.

 

So basically your one of those ****** that drives with is brights on all the damn time? This is definitely worse than that JAF sticker, at least the sticker only made you look like a ricer, not a complete dink.