After driving the van home over the weekend I was reminded how poor the stock halogen bulbs are. Has anyone replaced the stock bulbs with something like in the link below? I checked the archives but saw nothing recent on this topic.
I am looking for more throw and a whiter light than stock but don't want to annoy oncoming traffic. That is kind of a pet peeve of mine so I don't want to be a problem to others. If these aren't good are there any other solutions that don't cost an arm and a leg or two?
After driving the van home over the weekend I was reminded how poor the stock halogen bulbs are.
Its likely related as much or more to the housings than the bulbs. The stock housing suck badly. Simply installing brighter bulbs may not help much. You will find that replacing the housings and adding projector lens's along with either HID's or LED's will make a huge difference. Search for Redoval's posts for great solutions to your questions.
The real problem with the 350 headlights is the awful focus of the reflector which was either not designed for the bulbs employed or fabricated to meet the vehicle aesthetics without really attempting to optimize the effect of the lights. I have tried 4 or 5 different 9006/7 varieties and some H2 conversions with same results. Nice and bright and I could not see squat.
After consultation with Daniel Stern who I was advised by several sited to approach, who confirmed there is no real fix for this, I elected to follow his recommendation of converting the headlights to the Utility Spec and acquired through him a Japanese lamp and the usual H2 55/65 halogen bulbs. Result is much better, worth the cost but not great like say my stock Ford Focus or the very expensive but effective HID conversion I did for my F550 whose stock lights were an equivalent "awful" to the E350.