jesusers

I've decided I'm going to spend about $1300 on a custom set of lights or just put in brighter bulbs.

Is a great retrofit worth that much? The look would be amazing, I'm sure the light would be better, but how can I justify that? I'd feel like an idiot dropping that kind of cash on a truck that works just fine.

mustangGT90210

Look at theretrofitsource.com and go for the Morimoto Mini projectors. From what I understand, they just bolt into the hole where the halogen bulb would go. All you have to do is open the housing, "insert into existing holes" and then close it up

fordfan77

My heads and tails were around $600 for all with the hid kit in front, check them out in my garage

mustangGT90210

Those are recon's man, I think the OP is getting at real HID projectors.

Regardless, those look really good on your truck! I wish they made some stuff like that for '91s

jesusers

Yeah a projector retrofit. Your lights look sweet, I just haven't been sold on the light output.

fordfan77

Actually they are Spyder's and I put in a hid kit after I got them, the hid kit was only $100 at carid.com and they have some choices in color output when you order. I also put some led's in the turn signals too since you have to reuse the original bulb and I didn't think it that looked right.

coppercarbide

Yes yes, a million damn times yes.

Adding true HID's was a very long project for me (had to do it the hard way), but holy HELL am I ever glad I did.

I tried the drop-in HID approach with the aftermarket housings, and let me tell you... the lighting is garbage compared to a true HID retrofit, absolute garbage.

I have received a TON of compliments on the HID lights, both the brightness and the very sharp, distinctive cutoff that true HID's get you. As a very large added bonus, it's really nice to know you are BLINDING other people by using HID's in the OEM lights that were never intended for them.

Not sure if you're planning on doing it yourself, but I bought all my stuff from theretrofitsource.com and had really good luck with their parts, high quality stuff and excellent post-purchase support (I had a couple issues with DRL's and stuff).

matt99

if i could get ahold of a cheap set of stock headlights I would retrofit mine in a second, but for now just aiming the stock lights up is going to have to do. The aftermarket projectors have a horrible light output and are finicky later in their lifespan

HIDs in stock housings spread light but aimed properly the 2009-2011 f-150 heads are not horrible offenders.

coppercarbide

Absolutely, totally, 100% disagree.

The halogen reflector bowl is very carefully CAD modelled and constructed. The focal points inside the bowl are calculated within very small tolerances (fractions of a millimeter).

This is why you can have dual-beam headlights. The low-beam filament reflects on certain places inside the bowl, which translates to a certain beam pattern on the ground. The high-beam filament, just 1/4" over in the same bulb, lights up a completely different part of the reflector, and changes the beam pattern entirely.

An HID bulb is a COMPLETELY different size than the specc'd halogens, which means they are lighting up portions of the reflector bowl that they were never intended to. The result of this is that you get absolutely CRAPTASTIC light, and you blind oncoming traffic.

RES4CUE

I have to disagree 100% with you, I have a nice set of HID bi zenons in my stock housings and the have way better light output and pattern than stock. I have had them om for over a year now and rarely if ever get flashed by oncoming traffic. Is there that crisp cut off that a true projector would give? No, but they do not throw light up distracting airplanes like people that have dropped a grand on the retro fit suggest.