HID LED upgrade with photos | SwedeSpeed

On a more recent road trip I drove my car in the rain and found the low beam HIDs performed poorly, I barely could see anything on the road. I took the covers off the headlights and found they were manufactured in 2014, which means they’re the original HIDs and very old. I also took out one of them and found the part where the light emits was very hazy. I also inspected inside the projectors if had the reflecting surface flaking off, which it didn’t appear to be. Nice mirror light surface all around, I also know what the beam pattern looks like on projectors with damaged reflecting surface.

I looked into HID replacements from Osram, since I heard they are the best on the market, but ended up being scared away by them all costing over 150 bucks for a pair. I remember hearing about LEDs that are an HID design, which connect to the original ballast too. So I decided to give them a try. I went with Sealight branded lights, since I have purchased 3 kits from them previously for my Civic and have had a very good experience with them. The 3 kits were 2 generations of low beams, and a set of fog lights.

Anyway, I recieved the replacement bulbs and was impressed by the quality out of the box. All aluminum design and looks overall very well built.

I put them and and was very surprised by the result, very bright and wide hotspot and the low beam pattern looks pretty much unchanged. Other than light pattern curving upwards at the edges, but that was already present with the original HIDs. There’s also a bit of a shadow below the hotspot, but out on the road it’s below the hood line so I cannot see it.

Yes I am aware my original HIDs are dimmer compared to brand new ones, I simply was seeing if there was any drastic change to the beam pattern that would cause people to be blinded by the low beams. High beams are also much improved too, but didn’t get any photos of that. Since the extra halogen high beam would affect the comparison.

My car seems to suffer from the low beams being aimed a bit too low, so I likely will raise the cutoff line about half an inch in about a week. I’ll leave it as is for now, since I mainly want to test for a week if they will remain working good.

If anyone is looking to buy these, note that the retaining fingers on the side are a bit difficult to get over the housing. But helping any stubborn fingers slide over with a small flat head screwdriver will help them along. Before anyone asks, there are no bulb out errors that appear from them. Modern LEDs draw around 35 watts of power, which is exactly what the old HIDs were rated for.

Here’s a link to the product I ordered, if anyone else is interested in buying these same bulbs: Amazon.com