my head lights just sucked. i kept them on the brights setting and they still sucked. part of the problem is they are aimed too low but even if i aim them they were too dim. so i chose to do two things to up grade them. i got some sylvania silver stars. ive heard from several different sources that they really work well. then i put two relays in to the headlight circut to provide battery power directly to the lights instead of the power having to go through all the old wireing, and switch. heres the head light i used i took pics of the the lights as i changed things. its hard to see the differences in the day light but ill post them anyways. heres the lights that were in the car. they are sylvania halogens. i changed only the drivers side bulb to be able to compair them. heres the drives side changed to the silver star bulb with stock wireing. next i installed the relays. i cut off the tape that went around the wireing loom right before it goes through the radiator support and found the two wires that power the head lights. one is red with a black tracer the other is green with a black tracer. heres how i wired the relays. heres the relays installed on the inner fender. heres the relay wires tapped into the harness. and here are the lights with the relay power. its still old bulb on passenger side and a silver star on the drivers. you can see with the relay upgrade that the silver star bulb really is alot brighter. i havent driven it at night yet. when i do ill up date the thread on the improvement.
I had halogen bulbs in mine and they still sucked. Did the relay upgrade and the change was huge! May upgrade to Silverstar's now.
ditto... I have sylvania extra vision and the they sucked and kept tripping the headlight circuit breaker. after tracing every wire in the system and not finding a problem, I added the relays and WOW, what a difference! This is definitely one of the best upgrades. Nice work and info, Bryant.
Nice. I have the same silverstars downstairs in my Spring install pile. Had them in my Cherokee(sealed beam) for years now. Big improvement over standard halogen without going to some cheesy aftermarket lamp that blinds other drivers. Keeps a nice factory look also. You'll like them.
looks good. What relay did you use? Does the red/black go to one headlight and the green/black to the other? Does the dim and bright switch still work?
I put silver stars in my 99 pickup, BIG difference. Before dim was about like a flashlight, now dim is like my brights used to be. May get a set for the Mav this summer and do the relay deal too.
a standard style relay. i used two of them. the brights do work. i didnt figure out what color wires controled the brights vs the regular ones but the wires for the lights goto the drivers side bulb first the over to the passenger side. so the two wires i cut and tapped were for the brights and the regular circut.
I performed the head light relay upgrade with the Sprint when I put it on the road 2 summers ago. It was a huge difference with the stock sealed beams. Heck even my instrument panel lights got brighter.
What size fuse(s) did you use? Would a 20A for each, bright and dim, be sufficient? How about a single 30A for both? Would be nice to have bright/dim on separate fuses so one might stay lit if one fuse burned out. But, I think the factory put bright/dim on the same circuit breaker (in the headlight sw). Think both bright and dim burn for an instant when dimmer sw is fully depressed.
Agree, especially since the factory used an auto reset breaker. Doesn't seem like a good idea to use anything else. Guess I'll order two 20As.
i have 15 amp fuses in it right now. no problems yet but not much night driving. i think im going to switch to the 20 amp circuit breakers now that i think about it.
All things considered (cost, time, improved function) this is one of the best modifications I've come accross so far. It was a little intimidating at first, but once I got into the wiring harness....everything was exactly as indicated in this post. It was a very easy modification to perform and everything worked as expected. This mod seems to have eliminated the overloading issue I was having with the headlight switch and resulted in much brighter headlights. Thanks for the wonderful post!
