Long time reader, first time poster here. We have a 2015 Explorer Sport in the family, and like many here, I was very disappointed in the factory headlamps.
For background, I myself have an Expedition, F350 and F150 Lightning, which are all retrofitted, with Mini H1 7.0, FX-R, and RX350 projectors - so as you can imagine, getting out of my own rides and seeing just how bad the OEM headlights on the Explorer are was an even greater dissapointment for me, and frankly concerning for my Mother's safety, as her eyesight isn't as good as it once was.
Tony, I shared in your agony reading these last 14 pages, as otherwise well-intentioned members are repeatedly scammed by the same smooth salesmen pitching "top quality" bulbs and all hawking re-labeled, cheap components, and shamelessly telling customers that the HID retrofit is just "nonsense" to make a sale. Unfortunately, as some discovered, by the tenth time you have to pull out another cheap chinese ballast, the great customer service and good price are long forgotten by then.
Anyhow, on to my contribution here - I began the lighting upgrades on the explorer just recently, with a set of the Morimoto XB LED fogs - the performance of those fogs is impressive, the width they add to the stock headlights really makes a difference, they almost feel adequate now - but I have to confess I am apprehensive about opening up the stock housings - all of my other retrofits were done with butyl sealed aftermarket housings, and I haven't tangled with Permaseal yet. To top it off, a quick search shows that the Explorer Sport's particular blacked out housings are rare and expensive. For that reason I tried a Morimoto 2 stroke 9005 LED kit - which unsurprisingly turned out to be junk - just to see if I could get away with not opening these.
So, my questions end up being two - is there any source for the OEM Explorer Sport housings at a less than exorbitant price, and any tips or tricks for getting these housings open with minimal scarring? I don't like risking leaving my mother without headlights for a week if I damage them while trying to help her, I'd rather go over and pop in completed housings in an afternoon.
Ideally, I would like to use the OEM Ford Osram ballasts, TRS has a 40w boosted version available, take advantage of the stock mounting points for those ballasts and use the Morimoto D1S-D2S adapter to connect it to the bulb. I might be overthinking this and just go with a D2S ballast and use some 3M tape to hold it in place, and probably a set of Nightbreaker bulbs.