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Dumb question hids or halogen

9.8K views 17 replies 9 participants last post by  Ridewitme  
As @millsusaf said, you likely have halogens. They are sub-optimal. I swapped them out for HIDs a while back, although it took a little doing to get them right. I used the Morimoto Mopar kit from The Retrofit Source. It comes with bulbs, harness, ballasts, everything you need. If you go that route, make sure you get the correct bulbs. The page defaults to a 9005 bulb, but I needed the 9012 style bulb. You need the return wire at the bottom of the bulb, and the tabs on the socket only go in one way. I got the wrong bulbs and wasn't happy with the results. I contacted them, the customer service guy checked and sent me the correct bulbs at no charge. They are a bit of a PITA to install, given the under hood clearance to reach the bulbs, but it's like night and day. ;)

Same camera settings, same section of road, top half is with the stock halogens, bottom half is with the HIDs.

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If your happy with the brightness of your current bulbs man stick with that style and watch YOUTUBE videos on the best Halogen bulb for your vehicle and go that route. OR if your willing to spend all the money time and effort to upgrade to HID, they are much brighter but also cost much more when they go.
I'm a performance guy and I could care less about lights, I just need them to work. The HID's are nice and bright at night especially on dark un lit back roads so with that being said maybe worth the extra cost to some.
As I noted above, the stock halogens in my 2014 Durango were OK, but nothing special. I installed Morimoto kit, it was $215 and included bulbs, ballasts, wiring, etc. I wouldn't go back to halogens after seeing the difference.
 
Curious how you did the install. Simple or nightmare?
It wasn't simple, but it wasn't a nightmare either. ;)

The instructions are fairly straightforward, the biggest problem is room and access underhood. It wired up easily, but I had to be a little creative in mounting the ballasts and other parts - I ended up using some zip ties to hold things in place. Getting to the headlights themselves is the biggest challenge. The driver side isn't as bad, as you can pull the air cleaner housing and access the back side of the headlight assembly, but the passenger side pretty much needs to be done through the access hole in the wheel well. You are pretty much working one handed and by feel.

The bulbs are part of a short harness that goes through the dust cap. Once you remove the cap, you cut a small hole through the center of it, and the harness has a gasket that seals the hole and feeds the wires through. I used some silicone around the gasket to help seal it.

This is the kit I bought. They call it 2015+ but it works on the 2014 which has the single bulb headlight per side. Make sure you select the correct bulb size - the page defaults to 9006 but I needed the 9012, as I mentioned above. You can look at the installation guide (PDF) here. It looks like it has been updated from the one I downloaded originally. Follow the directions for "internally wired" lights.