Lets brainstorm lighting ideas

My 2012 mazda6 has headlights that Re dangerous. So dim and useless on a clear night, let alone during inclement weather. 

This is the same car, same.color, same fog lights as mine. Im not near the car today, so a representative image will have to do.

To date,  my efforts to make improvements:

1. Polish headlights to perfectly clear. No help

2. Adjust headlights to put light further down the road. Past recommend height of projector cutoff has been tried. Better. I can see road signs at 10 yards now.

3. 55w hid conversion in low beams no real change.

4. 100w hella halogen bulbs in low beams. Foreground light fantastically improved,  15-20 yard illumination. 

5. Adjust again, maxing vertical adjustments for the while way up. I can light up the reflective interstate signs, but still only have 20-30 yards of useful light.

6. Straight wire low beams to battery to give all thevoltage and ground. No noticeable improvement 

The efforts have shown that there is nothing to be gained with the factory housings. Im out of options there.

So, i guess we're going aftermarket. I need to keep it respectable looking for work, so mad max style is out. But I HAVE TO GET better light. This is downright dangerous. Im looking for ideas. Hella 5 inch lights bolted to a stinger bar? Light bar behind the bumper? What do we have?

My issue is primarily visibility distance on low beams. High beams aren't that great either,  but i don't run them as i don't want to blast oncoming traffic lick some jackhole brodozer.

Photoshop ideas? Trics i haven't tried? Suggestions? Ill take anything right now,  as my brain is lacking inspiration or ideas that seem realistic and practical. 

Rip the headlights open and put in better projectors.  Go bixenon, as you'll gain high beam performance that way as well.  

Lightbar in the bottom grill?

In reply to rslifkin :

I had thag thought. Even looked at them when i went to tbe other set of halogen bulbs. Not sure thag there's enough room in there to do it, honestly. 

Slippery: thats actually a thought ive had! How far downfield do lightvmbars work effectively? Glare for oncoming? 

Slippery (Forum Supporter) said:

Lightbar in the bottom grill?

Light bars don't project light. They flood an area. They also blind people. So, no. Just no. 

I'd be surprised if you couldn't fit something like a set of Mini H1s in that housing.  They're surprisingly not-big.  The ones I put in the BMW are slightly smaller than the Bosch low beam projectors I took out. 

No amount of lumens will compensate for a crap bucket design.  In many cases, changing the light source makes things worse.  It doesn't seem like much, but the parabolic design of the bucket is [supposed to be] engineered to accommodate the light source.  Simply switching from an incandescent filament (tubular-linear, 3-dimensional light source) to an LED (2D rectangular light source) can turn a perfectly great headlight bucket into a bucket of junk.  I'm going through that with my 94 Branger.  I blew a stock headlight bulb and there were some LEDs on sale on Amazon.  The result was no real change from the driver's perspective, but countless oncoming drivers flashing their highs and one ticket from a cop made me realize just how poorly the focusing was when I changed the shape of the light source to LEDs.

Most aftermarket stock replacement buckets are nearly identical copies of the original, so it may not help, but possibly worth a shot?  Maybe find some that are returnable and try them?

I guess the only other thing I can think of is some bling-tastic aftermarket lights?

Truthfully, I'm not that surprised that a factory light sucks.  My bestie's 2016 Beetle is just hideously awful.  So is dad's 2004 Silverado.  Someone did an article a few years ago about how DOT standards for headlights are so outdated.  They set the standards by wattage back in the 50s, but there was little they had to test.  Every car came with either big or small, round or rectangular sealed beam headlights sourced from one of about 6 manufacturers.  Now that headlights are unique to each vehicle design, it seems like the DOT standards are a bit like...

Yeah, the factory ines on this one missed the mark. Lots and lots of dissatisfied people on the forums, with no real solutions. 

Only stock stuff available is 200+ each. No.

And the mini h1 is what i had an eye for, but these are super compact inside. Do not seem to be a true projector, at lease based upon what i can tell from the back. I honestly worry theres not enough room in there. He ce the ideas around light bar and hellas.

Im glad to know light bar is barking up the wrong tree. Im looking for not annoying lighting distance. 

I had this problem with the G35. Crappy aftermarket HID lights had been installed before I bought it and they SUCKED. Wrong color, lots of foreground light, zero light down the road where you need it. OEM replacements were $700+ each so that was out.

What I did was gut the housings and install Hella projector low beams and high beams. They are now awesome. I will say this was a bit of a PITA. It took lots of figuring and fiddling to get the new assemblies into the old housings but it did work out very well.

Before. 

Projector and high beam installed in the old housings. 

After. It's hard to tell they have been modified unless you get up close to them. 

There is a bit of a gap around the high beam fixture. 

Light output. Low beam.

High Beam.

The fixtures I used. 

High Beam, Amazon $70 each.

Low Beam, Amazon $46 each.

Edit: To get the lenses off the housings, stick them in the oven for 30 minutes at 200 degrees. It will loosed the adhesive so you can pry them apart. 

Second edit: Put them on relays so you don't take a chance of burning up the OEM relays. Just use the factory power output as trigger for the relay. 

Third Edit: Fixed the link to the low beam. 

You might also just mount a set of Hella 500s on the front.  Oversized driving lights look good on just about everything.

They helped SanFord out. He throws a pile of light down the road with 2 - 7" sealed beams and 2 Hella 500 driving lights.

From what I can make out, JW Speaker has a 15" LED light bar that is SAE certified not to blind people and make them hate you: here .  Made in your country.  Not sure what the price is, though.  Maybe not as dramatic as two big round Hellas, but OTOH you only have to (find space to) mount one thing.

Hella 500s, a driving pattern light bar, etc. are all not a solution for bad low beams.  They make great supplemental high beams, but NONE of those additional lights throw a low beam pattern, so DOT, SAE, ECE, etc. certifications aside, every single one WILL BLIND oncoming traffic. 

In reply to rslifkin :

This was my thoughts as well. Every car I've owned has garbage low beams but solutions for low beam supplementation are few. I had a similar era Mazda that had meh low beams that I put some cheap 35w HiDs in and they were fine. Not great but serviceable. Is it possible the reflector bowls are trashed or something? I just find it curious. 
New projectors are probably the best option, though the most difficult. 

I think Toyman has the best answer for the low beams replacing the crappy projector with a Hella unit. 

For the high beams a cheap easy upgrade is to replace the 9005 bulbs with the newer, much more bright 9011 bulbs. They are the same wattage but a more efficient design that produces a lot more light. You need to trim one of the tabs of the bulbs to fit it in a 9005 housing. I did this on my Subaru Legacy and the high beams are great now when I get to use them.

https://store.candlepower.com/mohirbuba.html

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael (Forum Supporter) :

Back when you were a little boy I had a similar problem. I mounted a pair of the round hi-lo Hella replacement  halogen headlights in a set of tractor light pods and wired them so I could swap from the stock lights to the "tractor" lights. Either set worked normally on the dip switch and the tractor set just looked like a set of typical rally lights. A set of glass, round Hellas throw a proper beam with a nice cutoff on low beam. I've been considering doing a set for my Miata because its headlights suck and my eyesight isn't getting better with age.

My wife's 04 ion had this issue, no matter what you did with the factory lights. I ended up going with some retrofit kit that was popular on redline forums at the time and it was marginally better. You could drive that car on full time high beam and no one flashed you. When she started working at night I caved in and just bumper mounted a pair of "off road" driving lights. Looked horrible but it made the light 5x better 

In reply to DeadSkunk (Warren) :

Any way you can link me tjose lights? Sounds perfect for what i need. 

Everyone: im about this close >< to no longer messing with the stock housings at all. Abd im not certain that they would survive baking for a retrofit,  as someone epoxied a lot of the passenger's side back together at some point. This car was hit pretty hard in the past and never reported to insurance. Shouldn't have bought it,  but i did. So now i deal.....

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael (Forum Supporter) :

Hella 5 3/4 Inch H4 High/Low Beam Halogen Conversion Headlamp Kit (Clear) - 002850811 | 4wheelparts.com

TISCO Headlamp Assembly, 2N13005C at Tractor Supply Co.

My old tractor housings actually mounted the light in a rubber seal, but these would work. It's all standard 5 3/4" round headlight stuff.

In reply to DeadSkunk (Warren) :

Ah!!! I was thinking WAY smaller. 

I may still have some of those housings in cold storage. Need to look....

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael (Forum Supporter) :

They're standard sized headlights from back in the day, so your car will look like it's heading to a rally. I did this to an 80s Mazda GLC, so I didn't mind the rally look.

In reply to DeadSkunk (Warren) :

The tractor lights i was thinking of are the 3.5ish ones i ise for backup lights. 

As afar as the 5.75 headlights,  i actually retrofitted bmw hella projector setups from an e30 to my 64 el camino. And have another set for darth Nader.....

And i had the hella h4 housings in the 65 mustang! 

This setup you propose,  4 wide on a custom bar along the lowest edge of the bumper would be an amazing amount of light. I may be able to sneak two into the lower grille opening for a more subtle look with proper application of sawzall.....

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael (Forum Supporter) :

I only ran two lights, just the hi-lo units. I didn't bother with the hi-beam only 2nd pair.

Headlight refinish kit?

dxman92 said:

Headlight refinish kit?

Three times now! There is no practical way to get them any clearer.