Jeep H4 Headlight Conversion - Face it for what it is .. YJ Wranglers & XJ Cherokee headlights are terrible! May as well be holding a dollar store flashlight in front of you.
I demonstrated the Relay harness upgrade. Now it's time to put in some real headlights!
My YJ left a lot to be desired in the realm of night time visibility. But I really didn't realize how much until I completed the relay harness and H4 light upgrade. HUGE difference!!
The relay harness didn't make a huge difference with the old school sealed beam headlights. That either means that my wiring in he Jeep wasn't getting a whole lot of voltage drop or those big bulky sealed beam lights just sucked that bad! Well, when I installed the Hella H4 conversion is when I realized that it was the sealed beam bulbs that were not up to par. |
Even with the standard Hella 60\55 bulbs that came with the kit was a huge difference over the factory sealed beams. One of the Hella bulbs that came with the kit went out 3 days later. The bulb going out gave me the opportunity to speak with a very nice police officer (seriously .. he was a cool fella). He simply gave me a "fix it" ticket and away I went. I went straight to Wal-Mart which was about a mile down the road. There I went ahead and dropped the change for some Sylvania SilverStar H4 bulbs. Much brighter and whiter than the standard Hellas that came with the kit.
So, you may or may not opt to upgrade the bulbs that come with the kit. Even if you don't that's fine because its still a nice improvement over stock. Getting the upgraded lamps is the major bonus. This gives you options of what kind of bulbs you want to run. It can be $10 cheapo's or $100 super bright! Heck, at this point you can even go into LED or HID for your choice of a light source.
Now .. word of caution. Your factory wiring harness can't deal with the high wattage bulbs. The wires and/or headlight plugs will get hot. At best they will melt and short out just to blow a fuse and lights stop working. Worse case ... well wires get hot and burn up your ride :-( . So, if you are going to turn up the wattage .. do the relay upgrade shown here!!