Hella Xenon headlights

[doylerl]

I have a 2003 Hyundai Sonata, which I recently decided to upgrade the headlights in. The brights were "ok" but the dims sucked. I went to Advance Auto and asked for the "best" they had for that car. They said the Hella brand Xenon bulbs were the brightest and most clear, so I picked up a set for $49.99 + tax. I have included before and after pictures for your viewing pleasure:

Left = old dims, Right = Hella dims

Left = old brights, Right = Hella brights


The pictures are bad because they were taken with my phone, but you can still CLEARLY see the difference.

Also, these are DOT approved, and are still only 55W just like the originals. No rewiring, overheating the wiring, or burning the headlight surround!

Beware if you get the kind that are sold on ebay that come with their own wiring. This is literally like putting a 100W bulb into an easy bake oven. It is very dangerous, and can easily cause a fire, damaging your car or injuring someone.

[FestYboy]

the next upgrade would be Bi-Xenon HID bulbs. i have a set installed in Caety's Aspire and the differance in output is unbelievable. Plus they use less power. i have 4300k bulbs installed for a pure white light (none of that blue crap).

[PhoenixSHO]

Ive done this with my old SHO but with sylvania silverstars , they are really bright and its only a matter of replacing the bulb , no HID crap.

[FestYboy]

^ that's the thing, she HAD Silverstars installed and we STILL couldn't see well at night, that's why I went with the HIDs and the install took 15 min. the other thing is, i don't have any issues with the festivas, just her Aspire (and yes, i polished her lenses before installing the HIDs and that still didn't do the trick).

i'd be willing to bet that if you went with a 4300k kit (bi-Xenon so that you have high and low beam) you won't go back to regular bulbs.

[SimonTuffGuy]

Here's my bi-xenon projector HID swap light output.....



This was before having them aimed correctly... They were almost 4" too high, but they are still pretty bright. These are 5k bulbs.





FWIW.... Putting HID bulbs in a non-HID projector housing is dangerous... Your standard halogen headlight housing is NOT designed for proper light output of HID's... You end up with bright headlights, that blind everyone coming towards you. And yes... I ran a set of them in Casper... But, I know better now. Do the right thing. If you want to run HID bulbs... Go retrofit.

[GenevaDirt]

FWIW.... Putting HID bulbs in a non-HID projector housing is dangerous... Your standard halogen headlight housing is NOT designed for proper light output of HID's... You end up with bright headlights, that blind everyone coming towards you. And yes... I ran a set of them in Casper... But, I know better now. Do the right thing. If you want to run HID bulbs... Go retrofit.

totally agree with the comment for most after market HID setups.....

but if you get the right ones, like mine , then you have HID high beams....so you are not running them into on coming traffic anyway, at least most people turn off their high beams when they approach other traffic.