I'm BACK!, kind of... NTM '97 (1 Viewer)

[Polak]

Picked up this '97 Base 2WD to be our eldest son's first vehicle. Super clean one owner out of Arizona, 214K on the ticker. Going to go through all the mechanical stuff slowly with him to get some sweat equity in it. We have a few months before he gets his permit.

The one thing I really want to do is the headlights. Researching on here and the net, it looks like there are several options out there for full housing replacements ranging in cost from "okay" to "holy sh!t".

For those who have done headlight upgrades, what have you done and what are your pros/cons for the way you went?

 

[5speed addict]

My suggestion would be change the headlights over to new aftermarket 99-02 units and then go from there.

As far as your other options go:

H4 headlight harness+ Higher output bulbs - pro: hella 80/100w “off road” bulbs are dirt cheap and very bright for halogens and you keep a factory style swappable bulb setup. Con: a h4 harness will have to be made or you can find one from a REPUTABLE (not amazon or eBay) source for $100+ Rallylights.com, painless wiring, hella. Do not cheap out on the harness, quality relays and wire only, cheap ones will catch on fire.


Led bulbs - pro: bright as heck. con: no matter what anyone says about their led bulbs not blinding people they are absolutely full of it, a reflector designed for halogen h4 bulbs does not work well with leds and you end up with light spilling out in weird patterns blinding on coming traffic. Don’t be that guy

Retrofit projectors - pro: very bright, great beam pattern con: expensive, install is a bit of a project.

This is my beam pattern with a projector retrofit

 

[splitshot]

^this^
I drive nights, for a living. So many obnoxious headlights out there that would have gotten tickets years ago are now not being enforced.
I like the '99-'02 OEM fixtures for 1 reason, they are glass and not going to oxidize like an aftermarket lens.
Great choice for the kido, our daughter is still driving the '99 and just under 400K miles.