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For those of you with Second gen Ranger and BII, and 1st gen Explorer Headlights!


Mtrhd0024

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I've not posted on here in quite a long time, but tonight I both received and installed new headlights for my 1990 Bronco II, and I wanted to share my experience.

This is relevant if you have an 89-92 Ranger, 89-90 Bronco II, or a 90-94 Explorer. All three vehicles share the same headlights, and your results will be the same.

Almost all of the above mentioned vehicles have extremely crappy headlights by now, (lets face it, they're getting old) which don't illuminate the road worth a darn. I could barely drive above 40mph at night because the visibility was so bad. I had water in my lights, the bulbs would get wet and blow out, the lenses were yellowed (I polished them once which helped, but that didn't last long) they were just a mess in general. When I finally got stopped by the police last Friday for having poor lights, I figured it was time to do something about them.

I purchased a new set of headlights on ebay for 63 dollars and some change, shipped to my door. The seller I bought them from was great, I had them within 3 buisness days.

For clarity sake, I want to link you to several posts I read over on the Explorer Forum (sorry to link outside TRS, but I feel I need to give credit where credit is due) which will be similar to my post, but they helped me a lot so the additional reading will be good for filling in the blanks on all the detail I left out.

These links are here:

About Different Bulb choices: http://www.explorerforum.com/forums//showthread.php?t=178127

About Replacing the Headlights themselves: http://www.explorerforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=183532

About upgrading to the brighter 9007 bulbs: http://www.explorerforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=181879&highlight=Headlight+Replace

Read through those three links and you'll learn a lot. I'll be repeating some of the above information, with a bit of my own experience thrown in. Again, this is not a "how to" necessarily, but simply a demonstration of my results. It shows what can be done at the very least. If you want in depth "how to's" read the above links.

What I did tonight, was install brand new headlight housings, modify them to fit in 9007 bulbs which are 30% brighter than stock, (its easy) as well as modify my wiring to run the brighter bulbs correctly (the high and low beams are wired in reverse on the stock 9004 bulb, and the upgraded 9007 bulbs)

9007 Bulbs came stock in some of the later Explorers, and they can be made to fit with very minor modification into the standard headlight housings. What you end up getting is a bulb that is 30% brighter than stock, which doesn't cost you any more than the stock bulb when you have to buy replacements, unlike the Sylvania Silver Stars and other upgraded bulbs which can be 40 or 50 dollars a pair.

I personally chose to use 9007 silverstars (they're expensive at $40 a pair) but my point is you don't need to use them to benefit from this modification.

At the start of the night, my headlights looked like this:

Just standard 9004 Sylvania bulbs in old, faded, water filled headlight housings.

Now before I show you this beam shot, let me warn you that there was much more light in real life than the camera actually showed. It was difficult to get the camera to pick up the beams properly, so very little light is shown. The camera was on the same setting in both the before and after beam shot though, so it will still give you an idea of how much improved the headlights were afterwards.

Beam shot before:

Terrible isn't it. Thats my neighbors mailbox just barely showing up in the picture.

So I started tearing apart the front end on my car:


Close up of the old headlight. You can see water inside it:


One side out:


Both sides out:


The old with the new. Fancy guessing which are the new ones? :D


My new 9007 Silverstar headlight bulbs still in the package, alongside a standard 9004 Sylvania headlight bulb.


One new headlight in:


And finally, both installed, both sides re-wired (I simply re-pinned the plug) and my new Sylvania Siver Star headlight bulbs installed!

In the picture, its a somewhat purpleish light, however in real life, its just a very white, very bright looking light. There's really no purple look to it at all, and you do not get any of the terrible HID glare that you would get from putting HID bulbs in a non HID housing.

And finally; a Beam shot after:

This was before I aimed my headlights, they were pointing low in the picture, even with the high beams on. Bear in mind again, there is a LOT more light in real life than what shows up in the picture. The road in front of my truck was now flooded with light! But between the before and after picture, with the same camera on the same setting, you ought to be able to get a sense of the improvement I saw!

Not only were my headlights now much brighter, but the Silverstars help to illuminate the sides of the road a lot better. You can see much further into the distance, and much more off to the side than you could before. The whiter light also brings out the detail in things much better.

This whole swap took me about 2 hours, from pulling the old ones out, to modifying the new housings, rewiring my plugs, and putting it all back together.

Anyway, I want to stop typing now before this post gets so long that people won't read it. Feel free to ask me any questions, I'll try and answer them as best I can! I just felt like sharing, because this is now one of my favorite "mods" that I've done to my truck. It makes night driving so much less stressful! And I'm finally able to do the speed limit now! (I hated driving like a granny!) :D
 
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Ozwynn

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this is a really good post. did you take any pics of repinning the light sockets? can you do a write up on how you did that and how you replaced the housings?

maybe we can get this in the tech library or even in the mag...... mods atleast a sticky?
 

Mtrhd0024

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this is a really good post. did you take any pics of repinning the light sockets? can you do a write up on how you did that and how you replaced the housings?

maybe we can get this in the tech library or even in the mag...... mods atleast a sticky?
Thanks man, I'm REALLY happy with the results, the difference was amazing. I wish I could have gotten my beam shots to show up more realistically, but hopefully it gets the point across anyway.

I can do a write up of repinning the plug if you'd like, but you've only got to swap two wires, so its pretty basic. There's a black ground wire, a red w/black stripe wire, as well as a purple wire, and you simply swap the red w/black stripe, and the black wire, (do this for each headlight) and thats all there is to it. I think the wire colors might differ depending on years, but there's usually a black wire, and usually a wire with red in it. Swap those two at the plug and you're good.

I would love to take credit for all of this, but I did a lot of reading on the explorer forum, and found a lot of this out by reading stuff over there. If you look at the link i posted about swapping in 9007 bulbs, it goes into a lot of detail, so its probably not even necessary for me to do a write up.
 

Ozwynn

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yeah, I know that, I have had to repin sockets but allot of people that read this forum would not know this
 

Mtrhd0024

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yeah, I know that, I have had to repin sockets but allot of people that read this forum would not know this
Were you talking about a general "how to repin sockets" instructional, or just specifically how to repin the headlight plug for this application? Repinning is really easy once you know how, but figuring it out for the first time with out destroying your plug can be a b**ch! lol. I could definitely see the need for an instructional.

I'll try and get around to it at some point soon. I'll have to pull things loose again to take pictures lol.
 

machine090767

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my dad's '92 explorer had such bad headlights (even when they were new) that when one of the bulbs went out, he didn't realize it because he was so used do his headlights being crappy.
 

Ozwynn

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yeah. the 9004 bulb really really sucks. And I have never been a fan of the headlight polish. better to sand the yellow off and then polish the lights. it only works once or twice and then you need to replace them.
 

Mtrhd0024

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my dad's '92 explorer had such bad headlights (even when they were new) that when one of the bulbs went out, he didn't realize it because he was so used do his headlights being crappy.
Yea, that was pretty much me when I got stopped by the police the other night. Water had sloshed up and shattered one of my bulbs, causing that headlight to go out. I didn't realize it was out till he stopped me.

yeah. the 9004 bulb really really sucks. And I have never been a fan of the headlight polish. better to sand the yellow off and then polish the lights. it only works once or twice and then you need to replace them.
Yea, thats why its definitely worth upgrading in my view. The 9007 is actually slightly under driven in these cars, which in my view is a good thing because it should extend the life of my bulbs some. I could have wired directly into the battery to provide full power, but again, bulb life is dramatically shortened when you do that, and when you're paying $40 for a pair of bulbs, you want em to last!!

And as far as the headlight polish, I've heard of some people having bad luck with it, but whatever the stuff is that I got, it worked really well. The lenses were dramatically clearer after applying polish about 3x to each side. Took me about 45 minutes to do, and then with slightly brighter 9004 bulbs, it definitely made a difference. The biggest problem with this is that there was still water inside, the reflector was still scratched and dull, and there was yellowing on the inside of the lens as well that you can't polish out.
 

Mtrhd0024

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I took a few more pictures today, and figured I'd post them up here for your viewing pleasure! :D


New headlights installed with the old ones sitting above.


From an angle...


Left Side


Right Side


Lights on.


And again with some glare! :)

Thats all for now!!
 

machine090767

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much better.
 

Ranger#1

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why didn't you use clear lenzes
 

Mtrhd0024

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why didn't you use clear lenzes
Whatcha mean? Like the euro headlights?

I didn't feel like it was worth $200 as opposed to $63 for euro ones if thats what you mean. I'm sure the light output would have been better but it wouln't have been worth the extra $130. I'd rather buy a coupule sets of Hella driving lights for that money.
 

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