My Jeep Joins the world of "Modern" lights!

My Jeep is old enough to drink (1997) and it has always had pretty bad sealed-beam headlights. On the advice of a friend who runs an old jeep as a mail delivery vehicle I finally bought a set of drop-in replacement housings to hold H4 bulbs and then a set of OSRAM Nightbreaker Unlimited bulbs.

NICE! If you aren’t paying attention I don’t think you’d even notice that the headlights are different by looking at the vehicle, but the visibility difference is astounding!

FAR better beam pattern, and a tested 98% increase in brightness over the old sealed-beams.

If you have an older vehicle running the rectangular sealed-beams, this sort of upgrade is well worth the money, the 20 minutes to install, and the 15 minutes to re-aim the lights properly once the more powerful bulbs are in place.

Looks good! I had the same year and model (same color too!) and felt that the oem headlight setup was inadequate for driving even 55mph on unfamiliar 2 lane roads.
So many times having to just hope there was nothing in the road that shouldn’t be there.

“15 minutes to re-aim the lights properly once the more powerful bulbs are in place.”

Aha! Thank you zespectre! THAT’S the step that is overlooked around here after folks go get their 6500k retina scorchers. So blue you think it’s the cops, so bright it’s hard to see when they’re approaching.
I think the sealed-beams last so long that the output and tint change, I had some in my truck that lasted a decade but by the end were ineffective as headlights. (or maybe I’m just getting old)

Yep, back when I had my ’86 Cavalier (4-light system), I replaced the outboard lights with H4 assemblies from JCWhitney.

Night and day…

Before, I’d have a teeny little circle of yellowish light cast by each light, barely discernable spill elsewhere.

After, a beautiful blanket of light all in front of me, and a fairly sharp cutoff up top (’though with a few “devil horns” punctuating them).

Then again, I was running 90W/130W bulbs, not the sissy-pinko 55W/60W bulbs usually sold. And I never ever ever got flashed for them being “too bright”. Absolutely loved ’em…

Oh, I did have to use the adapters to get the wiring right, but ran separate 14ga wires through 40A relays right to the junction-block. The OEM lighting just powered the relays’ coils.

The way I had ’em wired was:

• outboard lights, lowbeam

• outboard lights, highbeam

• inboard lights (regular “highbeam” halogens, for foul weather, not to see, but just making sure I was seen)

• driving lights (55W pencil-beams, took the better part of an hour to precisely aim the things, but well-worth it!)

Headlights high/low just controlled the outboard lights. I had a dual-switch-in-1-housing amber/blue to control the others. Blue for the inboard “highbeams”, to match the blue highbeam light on the dash, and amber for the driving lights, to match the yellow of foglights. At least that was my mnemonic to select which combo I wanted.

LOL, yup that’s the deal for sure.

I considered getting the 90/130 bulbs but the nightbreakers on my friends jeep looked so good I decided that I’d give them a try first since it was just a “plug and play” upgrade. At some point I may re-do the light harness but it’s too damn cold out to do it right now.