I figured Mr. S would post this already since he's a weenie but since he's probably still in bed (lazy git) I'll post it for him...

Last night I had to replace one of my headlights that had burnt out. The bulb replacement # was 9006 from an autopart store. I mistakenly picked up an old 9005 that we had sitting around. When I tried to install it, duh, it wouldn't go in. So I had a quick look at the inside of the bulbs...

The 9006, stock headlight low-beam replacement, has a single tab on the inside to match the lowbeam harness. The 9005 has two tabs to match the highbeam harness, so idiots can't reverse them . The good news is that the tabs on the 9005 are easily cut off/ground down with a rat-tail file. After grinding, with some cursing the 9005 will even clip into the stock lowbeam headlight socket, and then can be clipped onto the wiring harness.

I must say the light output with the lowbeam 9005s now is SWEET. It's a good mod to counteract the effects of aging, yellowing glass headlights (my headlights previously were very, VERY bad). Light output while doing a short testdrive was laugh-out-loud better - duhh, it's like having the highbeams on . The best part was the entire modification cost us roughly $15 for two cars. Literally the hardest part of the whole install was removing and installing the bulbs in the headlights! It took longer to work them into place than it did to grind them down so the lowbeam clips would fit!

I highly recommend this mod if you're not too worried about legality Just please make sure your beams are adjusted correctly so you don't blind everyone else on the road!

P.S. A good cheap place to pick up highbeam 9005 bulbs would be the junkyard... just an FYI

P.P.S. I have an AutoMeter voltmeter installed in my car and the voltage drop with the lights on is negligable... roughly 0.2V that I can tell. Alternator output while running 3 gauges, the 9005 bulbs, cruising at 3500 rpm and a 200W head unit remains in the 13.8V range.

 

I don't know if it was just mine, But I did this a while back and the bulbs blew in less than a month, Kinda sucks to see a real bright flash and then nothing... Just adding my experience.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by h8tred &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I don't know if it was just mine, But I did this a while back and the bulbs blew in less than a month, Kinda sucks to see a real bright flash and then nothing... Just adding my experience.</TD></TR></TABLE>

this could be because high beams aren't supposed to run all the time?


btw, if anyone can find my yellow 9005's i'd appreciate it..

 

Highbeams should be able to run constantly, it was probably a problem with your bulbs.

-Dustin

 

yeah im running 9005 on all my bulbs in my projectors
makes a big difference

 

Dangot! why couldn't you of posted this earlier. Like a week ago. I finally had a light go out after 3 years, and I bought the cool blues, but the 9006's.

I thought for a 1/2 a min on your idea, but I didn't want to break something else on my car so I didn't try it, but now I wish I had of. Oh well. I might see if its worth it with my current high beam bulbs, maybe not.