There are lots of way to go wrong here -- most of what's on the market in headlamp "upgrades" is junk, illegal, dangerous, or all three. See
this post and
this one. Also see articles on Allpar (with lousy photos but sound info)
here and
here.
Nutshell version: Put in
relays. If you need to stick to a tight budget, the only sealed beams worth driving at night with are the GE Night Hawk items, which are very far preferable to any other sealed beams. If you're thinking of upgrading to replaceable-bulb headlamps, shop very carefully because most of what's on the market is garbage, and even if you disregard the off-brand trash all over the internet and look only at reputable-brand lamps (Hella, Cibie, Bosch, Koito), the range of performance among them is very large.
There are no good, safe, legal, cost-effective HID headlamps currently manufactured in the 7" round size format since
these have apparently been discontinued.
"HID kits" in halogen-bulb headlamps (any kit, any headlamp, any vehicle -- no matter whether the "HID kit" and the headlight units are sold together or separately) do not work safely or effectively, which is why they are illegal. See
here.
There are a couple of 7" round LED headlamps on the market. The new one just released from Truck-Lite costs around $600/pair and they're better (they could only have been better) than Truck-Lite's first try at it, which was a headlamp very difficult for me to recommend. I'm hoping they continue to work towards improvement on this product. They appear well made of good quality materials, but oddly they are designed to the old sealed-beam performance standard rather than the newer VOA standard. The one from
JW Speaker is quite a good performer in terms of beam focus, reach and width, designed to the newer photometrics, and it is well made (in America) of good quality materials. Spendy, though, around $400 to $500 each.
Whatever headlamps you wind up with must be
aimed correctly.
(Other posts to see:
this one and
this one)
