Maybe I took it the wrong way because of the way most people seem to regard headlight mods of any sort over in the S197 sections. Over there, it seems that catering to the individual's "need to project a certain style" overrides any need to maintain somewhere near proper illumination, and where many of the people will do their lighting mods as cheaply as possible instead of even trying to do them right.


I've got the OE HIDs in my '08 GT, and frankly, I've found them to be a mixed blessing. Long story short, I finally tweaked the passenger side up just a little so that its beam would NOT be parallel to the driver side beam. That reduced the unevenness of the pattern - brightened up the dark patches a bit - but did not fix it entirely. Let's just say that the OE fog lights (halogens) still get used to fill in the darker regions.

On the other hand, the halogens in the Subie are about a match for the Mustang's HIDs for reach - and decidedly better for evenness. The color of the illumination just isn't quite as white.


I haven't used sealed beam headlights in any car of my own since about 1973, except temporarily to get the cars through inspection. In my case, I had joined a small sports car club and got to see firsthand from the passenger seat of another member's car what decent illumination looked like.

If you need a little more light and occasional bulb replacement isn't a problem, H4 bulbs with higher wattage than 60/55 are available. But hundred-watt filaments are probably too much for older wiring and alternator capacity (they take a second or so to come up to full brilliance, and you can actually watch this happen).


Norm

 

Yeah I have 7" Cibie H4 housings, which I assume will work with H4 HID conversions.