I'm sure someone has thought of, and already done this, but I'm thinking of doing this to our Escape and wondered if it would work on my Ranger.

Has anyone upgraded their stock headlight harness to run higher wattage bulbs without the worry of melting it? I was thinking either replace it with a heavier duty harness, or use the exiting harness as a "trigger" for a relay connected to the battery with a heavy gauge power wire.

On a couple of Escape forums, people are taking the headlight harness from a F-250 and grafting it into the Escape harness to run higher wattage headlight bulbs. It's not a direct "plug & play", but doesn't appear to difficult either. The biggest difference between the 2 harnesses appears to be the main power wire to the lights themselves.

So it got me thinking. Is there a full size ride out there (with heavier wiring) we could graft the harness from? Or, if nothing else, run a heavier gauge hot wire to the lights using the existing harness and a seperate relay? I figured either way wouldn't be difficult to do, just a matter of knowing which wires are what.

 

https://www.ranger-forums.com/forum2...highlight=piaa

go to summitracing.com and type in 9007 headlight harness

 

How high wattage of a bulb are you wanting to run? I ran a set of 110W bulbs for a few months but the filaments broke out on a bumpy road and I had no headlights so I went with Silverstars for the past two years and they're the best headlights out there in my opinion and I didn't have to replace a thing.

 

i ran Piaa extream white bulbs for 3 years the brightes halogen bulbs out there and the quality is the best

here is the low beam as u can see the silverstars are on the left and the piaas are on the right



Highbeam:

 

Actually, I'm thinking about the upgrade for couple of reasons.

1) The stock harness is only getting 11v to the headlights. Didn't check the fogs yet. That has to be hurting light output. If I upgrade to heavier power wire, it should increase voltage to the headlights. This would help even the stock bulbs produce more light.

2) I'm seriously thinking about upgrading to the Silverstar Ultras (running Xtra-Vision right now). I figure between those and the wire upgrade, my headlights should be pretty bright.

3) If for some reason I decide to put HIGH power bulbs in there, the harness is already there so I don't have to worry about melting anything.

SUVLights.com has a couple of premade harnesses I'm looking at.

Monster-- Any idea what the lumen output is on the PIAAs?

 

when I looked it was 80/100W, I dunno about the color temp

 

4300K from what I read on their site...

 

i am not sure about the lumens prob around 1,100 i am thinking last i saw them i can find it but the Kalven temp is 4300k so its like a sunlight temp raiting for the white light. i loved them when i had them and as u can see there is a little diffrence in light in the pics i posted.

But you will see a big diffrence jsut with the harness swap and the one from summitracing is very good one i have.

here are the specs from piaa for the 9007 xtream white bulbs.

Bulb Type 9007 (HB5)
Wattage 65/55w = 120/110w, 4000K
Technology Xtreme White Plus with XTRA Technology

i think all bulbs d.o.t approved have to be around 1000 lumens i think they just creep over the limmit a little.