It's not like I'm looking to get 8000k HIDs, kind of just want something wth better light output with housings that can tame the light and keep it under control. Seems to be an issue trying to find a good looking set of housings that will work well with HIDs on these trucks. Anyone care to fill me in on HIRs? I did research a while ago but kind of dropped it when I started digging into the motor.
I'll be 100% honest with you here where some may not be.
HID's = brightest light you can buy. Technically illegal to retrofit. Hard to get good output in a housing that wasn't specifically designed for them, but the glare can be cut down by using housings with "glare caps." The catch here is that while a normal 9006 halogen has a black-painted tip, the aftermarket HID capsule will not (though some OEM ones do.) This lets light come right out the front of the bulb into people's faces instead of back into the reflector in the housing. Glare caps in the housing cut down on this. Still, the light pattern is not ideal for a reflector housing and you'll still have excessive glare regardless of the caps.
HIR's = used in some OEM applications as has been mentioned. It's still a halogen type bulb, just brighter than regular halogens. You can get them from many sources including Home Depot, believe it or not, and they even have them for the usual price you'll find anywhere else. You'll need to do some very simple trimming on one lock tab to make them fit where a 9006 belongs. Are they much brighter than a 9006 halogen? Ehhh, not in my experience, and I did try them. An HD relay harness might help improve output a bit, but I still was less than impressed with the HIR output. It should be noted the HIR's also do not have the black painted tip like a 9006 so using them with housings that have glare caps is recommended.
LED's = can be fairly bright if you spend enough money on them, run very cool, don't draw a lot of power, and are "instant on" with no warm-up like an HID. Some don't require any external module and plug directly in, others have a power supply module similar in size/shape to an HID ballast so you'll need to mount it somewhere. Some have a heat sink with a small fan (which I don't care for), some have a larger heat sink with no fan (a little harder to fit but seem sturdier than a tiny fan), others have this weird bundled-up braided ribbon heat sink which may give you some more flexibility with the space you can mount the light in. Do beware that some LED's sold as headlights are NOT bright enough for the job! They also can tend to suffer from the same issue as HID's in that they are not really designed with proper optics in mind so you may end up with lots of glare and a poor pattern. Also recommended that you use housings with glare caps. BTW these are probably also not technically legal.
Richard
