I already have PIAA 9007's and am not overly impressed with them. They light great don't get me wrong, but am just looking for something a little more intense (Police don't appreciate Pro 80's to give your vision a little extra umph on the highway :). I've seen a few civics and a lowered Tahoe running around with an HID conversion and it's pretty impressive how well it works. I've tried writing Philips, Hidlights.com and a couple of other retailers but none seem to want to give me an answer as to whether or not I'm on crack thinking about putting a universal 9007 HID kit on a stock height Explorer. As far as I know the only reason they aren't a legal swap is because they don't have an auto-leveling device to prevent you from frying some poor guy's retinas when you hit a bump. Guess what it boils down to is if I could get away with it without the police pulling me over left and right. Anyone dealt with an HID swap before? Or if not have any suggestions on improving headlight output?

Thanks,
Sean

I don’t want to be the wet blanket here but stock headlights are more then adequate to light the road ahead of you. There is a reason the police will pull you over. We already have to deal with people putting 10000 watt stereos with 20 inch woofers in there vehicles making us go deaf, I don’t want to go blind too. The only reason you would need to increase your light output is if your driving off road at night or your driving down an dark highway at very high speeds. Install a pair of Hela 4000. That way, when your driving around town you wont be blinding everyone and when you’re off road you can flip a switch and light up the trail.

The lenses on the Explorers were not designed for the High Intensity Discharge lights your contemplating. Even if you could aim them lower, the lights will still be too bright for oncoming traffic. And if you aimed them low enough it would then defeat the purpose of spending all that money on HID lights.

Just my 2 cents.

It shouldn't be illegal, but you may want to check your local laws. Either way you'd want to get one that mounts preferably underneath your bumper, in the stock headlight location for obvious reasons would not work, though I believe someone has a kit for converting 9007 (95-current explorers like yours) to HID, I've heard its a waste of dough and the light produced is not much better because, as good as the bulb is, it still has the limitation of a crappy lens. If you seriously want ot go ahead with the 9007 HID swap, go over to http://www.f150online.com and do a search on the message board for HID, and see what people think. And if you go aftermarket, don't buy the cheap stuff, especially not the $50 HID pep boys special. Anything that says "Like HID" or even many that say "genuine HID" are simply halogen bulbs coated with a light blue tint. Expect to pay over $1000 for a true HID system, the PIAA one runs about $1700, KC has one for about $1800. And by the way... if it says "LIKE PIAA!!", it ain't...

Ya know, I know they've got a headlight upgrade in Jegs racing...I got them...I'd say they're about 28bucks for 2 bulbs and a $50 bucks for the wiring harness...They're not the kind of bulbs that all the low ride foreign rice rockets have that cahnge color as you look at them differently. They've got much more of a whitish, light blue hue....I loev them....Never been hassled by the cops and they are totally sweet because they are so much brighter than my stockers....I couldn't praise them anymore...I love em....Okay, they're headlights, I'm gonna settle down now
......Pete

Cameron-
How do you like the Hella 4000's? I am looking to replace my 500's that were just smashed and PIAA's are way too much money. How bright are they and do you think they will fit on my Procomp bar, I know it can hold the procomp 8 inch lights. Thanks in advance.

I’ll tell you the second I install them. Actually, I haven’t even ordered them yet. I’m going to wait until I go to the SEMA exposition in Las Vegas this November to see what new things Hela are going to offer.

I have 4 Hela 500s on my truck and am very happy with them. I want to move the two from the grill guard to the roof rack and put a pair of 4000 in their place.

I’m going to get a ton of information and plenty of pics too.

Sorry to rain on the HID parade but....

The only HID style lights to go with would be the HID foglights, not headlight replacements. Number one reason is that your stock headlight housing cant take it and the rear reflectors are not made to utilize HID technology. Number two is the ridiculous price. About 1800 for a good kit. The lights will most likely melt your headlamp assembaly anyways.
The only safe and right way to do it would be to get euro spec headlamps, which are not DOT approved, and then put in a HID replacemnt kit. Now you are well over 2500 bucks.
If all you really want are "blue" headlights go and pick up a set of "diamond blue" headlights from shuck's. You will know they are the illegal blue kind because they will say "Not DOT Approved". That's is the difference between the PIAA's, Superwhite and Hiperwhite and the illegal blue ones and HID. The HID and illegal are Blue, the superwhite are just very white. Even the sylvania cool blue bulbs are white.
Just a word of warning though. Those blue headlights are not DOT approved for a reason. They are very, very unsafe because they get the blue color by filtering out almost all of the other colors in the light spectrum. Blue only makes up like 20 or 30 percent of light. That means you are not getting very much light output at all. I did the Blue headlights on my girlfirends car and they look good because they match the clear corner lights. However I make sure she runs her foglights to keep the road bright. Cause the blues dont work for crap but look good. And you will get pulled over.. she just is good at crying herself out of tickets being a girl and all :)
I learned almost all of this on one website but I cannot remember the URL. Search around for super whites and illegal lights and so forth. I am sure you will find something.

Well... that was my 17 1/2 cents... thanks for listening...

I can confirm what bill has posted about the "cool blues", well, I mean I read the same stuff about them being less bright due to the blue tinting. However, I have 9007 Xenon's which are DEFINETLY brighter and clearer than stock, and only $15 bucks for the pair!

I also had some high input/output wattage bulbs in my 96, until it happened, my lights went out. What happened? The lights were pulling too many amps out the harness and melted both of the 9007 plugs. I'm not going to denied the lights provided better visibility. But it was a pain to replaced the suckets for a 9007 bulb. Specially when even Ford don't have them. A guy over Pepboys pointed me that the 9007 sucket looked very similar to the 9004 sucket, he was right. Now I'm running the OE bulbs until I get the 9007 super white PIAA's.

The trick is the amperage has to be the same as the OE bulbs. I guess PIAA found the way of wasting less energy on heat and applying this energy towards producing more light, keeping the amperage within specs. The older bulbs I had were rated at 85/105 watts.

From what I've heard, HID conversions are usually unsuccessful due to several reasons. 1) the autoleveling helps keep the beam at a safe level. 2) factory lenses and reflectors are often poorly designed (why do you think your factory lights suck in the first place), so that a HID light wouldn't give much benefit. Also, it helps to have the light closer to the ground to illuminate better.

HIDs, when executed well (BMW, Audi, etc) have a nice crisp beam that illuminate very well, and announce the road profile and obstacles much better than halogen bulbs. However, many imitation bulbs (non-HID) are just plain useless. Generally worse than OEM because they use blue-tint techniques to establish the white effect which cuts on power. I'm sure you all know that by now though.

Look more into auxillary lighting like a quality fog light for the city, then driving lights for the outskirts. Make sure the fog lights have some sort of lens diffusion on them to help deflect light to oncoming traffic. I had a set of Hella 550 Fogs on my Subaru back in the day and absolutely loved them. Nicely complemented the headlights with a full, bright beam that looked dim from head on. However, the quality of the lenses sucked, and the connections would always foul and short. Oh well.

My .02.

http://www.autobulbdepot.com


much good info...

T

I would LOVE it if I could find a direct replacement lense/wiring harness ect to replace the stock lighting in mine with the HID. My reason. The stock lights SUCK! :) BIg time. Mine have to be the WORST lights I have EVER had. :) Course my vehicle is liften and they may not be aimed quite correctly but they are as good as I can get them. The lights in my escort accualy light up the road in front of me. The lights in the Explorer dim up the road in front of me.

I don't know how in the world that HID is not DOT approved. If it was a large number of Porsches(sp)lexus', mercedes', bmw's, and other imported cars would not be allowed to run in the states here. People also would get tickets for running their stock headlights. Personally I think these are THE neatest lights I have ever seen! Its like runnign with a florecent bulb in front of you instead of a nightlight. :)

Thats my opinion here.

I agree, I think that HID rocks... I've never been blinded by it (and that includes when someone with HID is driving behind me and Im in my Saturn) and the light it shines is just awesome. Lets face it, headlights are designed more so other drivers can see you in the middle of the night rather then allowing for you to see the road extremely well... if they were designed the other way we'd have no need for fog lights, driving lights, etc. If I could afford it I'd pop in some HID in mine :).

Sorry if I am repeating myself but HID aftermarket lights are not DOT approved unless they are a factory installed option because of the leveling system and housing and wiring. It is a combo of these three things that make HID what it is. You can't just stick thousand dollar lights in a set of factory housings and expect things to work right. Would you stick a Integra Type R engine in your explorer? It is a high performance engine but wouldn't work with the explorer setup. (That's the best analogy I can think of, it's been a long day.) Your best bet would be to get a set of diamond back headlights that are DOT approved and get some superwhites. Now you are legal, look better, and have great clarity that will match something like superwhite foglights. It is obvious HID lighting is much better than anything else currently and the technology is starting to trickle down into less expensive cars. However, I believe it is still a 2000 dollar option or so on factory cars. The headlights we have now have worked for X amount of years since our explorers were made and things in the world havn't changed that much. My opinion is wait to do it once and do it right.

just my 2 cents and thanks for listening to my preaching.
:)

In order to get a little more light out of my piaa's I am going to put in a high wattage wireing set up. It looks like it directs elect. directly from the battery to the lights and is controled by a relay that plugs into the headlight wireing.
This should get all the watts out of the bulb. After my experiance with the factory wiring for the fog lights I gotta beleive the headlights are loseing wattage also.
Anyway I'll let you know if there is any improvement.

Hey again everyone,
Just to make positively sure I havn't been talking smack I hooked up with one of my friends hwo knows the owner of Extreme Motorsports. It is a local mostly Honda/Acura tuning shop but they do everything. So I made the trip to WA. and started talking about lights. He told me that he has never had a problem with high wattage bulbs. He has 100/120 watt PIAA's on his 85 Toyota Pickup. He has never had any customer complaints either and has never sold the "upgrade harness". however he did tell me that if you go the "Blue Bulbs", or the ones that say "HID Look", they will decrease lighting performance. But they look really good. So I went ahead and bought a pair of "Tuned by Matrix" bulbs for 35 bucks that were 80/100 watt HID Look. I also bought a pair of "Pep Boys special" hiper whites. They are 55/60 watt. they are supposed to be more like the PIAA's. They say approches HID intensity, ie. they are white not blue. I then did some comparisons. In summary:

1. The hiper whites are about as bright as stock, a little more and are a lot whiter and less yellow.

2. The Matrix bulbs are very blue and look WAAAYY sic I have to admit. They are also ALMOST as bright as stock. This is because of the higher wattage. All in all I was impressed by the brightness for a Blue light. They make a huge difference over 55/60 watt blue bulbs.

So in conlcusion, I will eat some of my words. If you are looking for HID look, or blue bulbs, these Matrix bulbs are not a bad choice, because of the incresed power. I ran them side by side with my stock bulbs and I didn't notice a great amount of extra heat coming off of them. just a small amount. Like I mentioned before, the guys at extreme have never had a problem with harnesses or lenses. I would still recommend upgrading your headlight to a new style sealed beam light which will maximize lighting performance. I was rather impressed with these Matrx lights but they are brand new so I couldn't compare to them in my previous posts. Lastly, if anyone is interested in buying these from me, I will get rid of em for 25 bucks. I did not want blue because they don't match my foglights like the Hiper whites. Email me at Bill@structured.com if you're interested.

Thanks again for everyone's time.

not that thats not cool, except PIAA doesn't make a 100/120 watt bulb... Just to clear that up... that's cool about the matrix bulbs though :).

everyone keeps mentioning that an HID conversion would probably melt your factory lamp housing. HID headlamps actually burn much cooler than conventional halogen bulbs. The initial lighting of the bulb is what takes so much voltage. After the lamp is lit, they are very efficient and run very cool.

Now, I have a question for you guys. Will the headlamps, turn signals, and grille from a 99 or 2000 mercury mountaineer bolt right in place of the 95-2000 explorer stuff. That would be a really cool switcheroo. I ove the way the mountaineer headlights look. They would look unreal with the PIAA superwhite bulbs.

finally, if you do put an HID conversion in your headlamps, you will lose your highbeams. The HIDs can't work like the dual filament bulbs in our headlights.

cya,

Andrew

I guess it depends on whether you are converting to true HID lamps or lamps that look like HID. If they are true HID, they will burn cooler than halogens. More light, less heat.

In my less than humble opinion, unless you replace the entire reflector assembly, the late model Explorer's headlights will not do what they should do or what you probably want them to do (I can't speak for the 91-94 models). They are too beamy and have no side illumination. They just don't point the light in all the right directions. I prefer a pattern that lights up evenly in front of the vehicle. Bright bulbs improve the scene, but I'd prefer a better beam in the first place.

For the record, I didn't like the low beams on my Contour either. But my 92 Ranger seemed to do a pretty good job of spreading the light out in front.

Just my $.02

Well, finally got a response from Phillips as to what's up with the plug-in HID system. Outside of the plug-in HID systems lacking an auto-leveling system, the main problem with excess glare is filament placement. One reason our PIAA's work and are SAE/DOT approved is because the filament is in the exact same area as OE lights. With the HID systems, the filament on the bulb isn't in the same location for 9007's, so it won't reflect properly. Apparently the 9006's being made are corrected for that, but that doesn't help much. Oh well, $800 saved is $800 earned :)