No, you’d have to switch them back to original.
Don’t you think that if the 9004’s could be used after the switch, that the 9007’s could be used before the switch? :dance:
Duh wasn’t thinking. To much testing in school today. :bang:
I finished this on my teg a couple nights ago and the difference is Amazing. its like driving with the brights on when the low beam is on and then when i turn on the high beams its like…whoa!
good tip
Damn right… its a really easy way to increase light output for a VERY minimal cost. Safety, visibility, and looks, are all benefits of this mod.
~Eric
you guys need to add pictures of it atnight driving
and a way to modify the bulbs instead of the headlight housing
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Cameras all have different night-capabilities. Also, different monitors will display the colors and light differently… so I’m not taking pics to “prove” this mod works, if its not going to really prove anything other than “yes, the lgiht work”, or “no, they don’t work”.
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No, unless you want to use a Dremel to cut a slit into the base of the bulb (which makes you run the risk of shattering the high-pressure bulb due to the vibration from the dremel). I don’t want to ruin $15 bulbs by trying this, when using a small knife on a teeny-tiny piece of plastic within the headlight housing will work, WITHOUT DAMAGING ANYTHING!!! Also, you might touch the bulb, causing premature failure due to the oil on the fingers. *** NEWS FLASH *** You can still put 9004 bulbs back in alter if you switch the wiring back. The headlight housing modification is to allow the 9007’s to fit, NOT to block 9004’s from being installed. Once you compare the bulbs and look at the housing, you will clearly see this (or you are a dumbass and also blind).
Sorry for sounding like a dick, but it’s a SIMPLE, hamrless mod which will help everyone see better at night. If you don’t trust me/us, then don’t do it, but don’t make retarded, senseless requests.
~Eric
pulled this off earlier tonight, and then later tonight my head gasket blew…so yeah i’m fucked, but it made a huge difference.
So I decided to try out the conversion, and I must say… I am impressed. Here are some pics 
here’s whats in the pics,
- Old bulb
- Silverstar 9007
- silverstar side view with wattage
- Shrink wrap on lower wires, and the solder job
- Took a dremel to the little fins inside the headlight.
The change from having them in was a huge improvement, I could see quite far now with the lights. However that being said. The silverstars are not white light which is what I was looking for, still a more yellow tinge to the light. So I decided to change the bulbs again. This time I bought bulbs to match the ones I have in the corners and fogs. Hiper brand.
And here is the results, which I had taken a pic of the silverstars in, but I was lazy and didnt want to wait till night time (did the job during the day, so I could see what I was doing). So far from driving, although I did lower the hipers (didnt want to blind people) it seems as tho the Silverstars emitted more light, but maybe thats just because I had them aimed quite a bit more up from the ground. Will do some more testing in the next few days.
Here’s the pics:
- Hiper brand 9007
- Night time shot side view
- Night time head on.
Enjoy 
I did the conversion recently and it made a major difference… I didn’t use the Silverstars though… I opted for the Sylvania 9007 XtraVision bulbs instead (kinda strapped for cash, couldn’t shell out $60CAD for the pair)…
One thing I did differently was I didn’t need to cut/solder the wires together:
If you examine the plug from the front (where the metal contacts are), you’ll see a little white tab that’s holding the connector to the harness… all I did was lift the tab up using a small flat-head screwdriver and pushed the metal contact out. Do the same for the other wire then swap it… no cutting, no soldering required… makes it easy for people that don’t know/want to cut/solder wires and also easy to revert back to the 9004s… hope this tip helps!
I did the conversion a while ago – but props to CURLS for the writeup!
To keep your “9004” ability, you can buy a 9007 harness from an auto parts store and hack up 2 9004 bulbs (hopefully 2 used/burnt-out ones). What I did was make a 9004 → 9007 adapter. This is what I did:
- remove the glass bulb of the 9004. I had to be careful here! Glass bulb is under pressure, so I wrapped it well with towels before trying to cut the wires leading to the bulb. Also used safety goggles…
I had used long nosed cutters to reach the wires of the bulb. - soldered the wire leads of the new 9007 harness to the wire leads of the 9004 bulb with the GND/high beam wires swapped.
- plug 9004 bulb base into stock harness, plug new 9007 harness to new 9007 bulb.
I had originally done it this way to allow for adding in a relay directly to the battery. But I’ve been lazy and the new 9007 are bright enough…
Ummm, for those of you cutting the bulbs or some such, why?? Just something so simple about switch two wires and trimming a bit of plastic that seems far simpler than removing a glass bulb and resoldering its base.
cpu2k - Hmmm, interesting idea. I may have to look into that first.
MethodMan - you aren’t worried about burning out your harness?? I did that to one of my cars with 135/155w bulbs once.
If you want to go back, simply switch the wires. Oh, and I am doing this tonight. I’ll see if I can take pictures of halfway using 9004 Sylania normals vs 9007 Sylvania Siverstars.
[QUOTE=curls]Here is a how-to I wrote up a while back on how to convert 9004 to 9007 headlight bulbs, which gives you much better light output in all aspects. Makes night driving 100 times better, and it doens’t blind oncoming traffic.
Headlight conversion (9004 to 9007)
This will provide you with tremendously improved headlight output, resulting in increased visibility and safety
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Remove existing bulbs. To do this, turn the plastic locking-ring, attached to the headlight assembly, counter-clockwise until it clicks loose. The headlight socket and bulb assembly should pull out easily. Be careful not to bang the bulb on anything in case of breakage. Remove the bulb, being careful not to touch the glass with your hands, as the oils can damage the bulb. You never know when you’ll need to re-use them.
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Swap the wires. This step involves looking at the harness from the wire-side (“back”). Hold the harness so the flat portion faces UP, and you are looking at where the wires are going in to the plastic harness. You want to switch the left and middle wires. Leave the wire on the right as-is. It is highly advisable to use a soldering iron and make a GOOD soldering connection to do this, and use heat-shrink tubing to seal it from the elements. However, my soldering iron broke, so I temporarily used crimp-connectors until I get a new soldering iron (Christmas gift, hahaha). Make sure to cut the wires at least 1 ½” away from the harness to leave enough slack to work with, and make sure to put the heat-shrink tubing on the wire before soldering (duh!). See picture #1 to a detailed view of what wires to swap.
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Modify the housing. In order for the 9007-style bulb to fit in the 9004 housing, you must modify the housing using a utility knife or exacto knife to cut two of the three tabs off of the housing. By comparing the grooves on the old 9004 bulb and the new 9007 bulb, you can see which tabs need to be cut off from the housing for the 9007 bulb to fit. Use the knife to scrape the tab away as cleanly as possible. See picture #2 for a detailed view of the removed tabs.
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Repeat the above steps for the other headlight.
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Install new bulbs (9007 type) into the harness, being careful to NOT TOUCH THE GLASS WITH YOUR HANDS. Use a couple of Kleenex’s or a shop-towel (the blue things on a roll) to ensure you don’t touch the glass with your fingers.
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Insert bulb into the headlight housing (reverse of removal), ensuring that it fits properly (that the tab you removed was the proper tab!), and then use the locking-ring to secure the assembly to the headlight housing.
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Test the new lights!!
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Make sure to properly aim the headlights, as the 9007 bulbs create a bit more glare than the 9004’s. I had to adjust mine down and to the right (passenger side) a bit more than normal. Use a large Phillips screwdriver through the holes in the radiator support to adjust the beam higher/lower, and left/right. There is more information on this in the Helm’s or on G2IC (Search!).
A general rule of thumb for aiming headlights is to measure 25’ from a white wall, on a flat piece of pavement. Park the car perfectly perpendicular to the wall with the headlights at the 25’ mark. Measure the distance between the two headlights from the centerline, and also measure the height from the ground, of the headlights (center). Mark this on the wall to get an ‘X’ where the headlights are centered. Now mark 2” down and 2-3” right of those marks. Mark that with a bigger ‘X’. This is where you want the “hotspot” of the headlights to aim. Turn on the lowbeams, and use the adjusting screws to get the headlights as close as possible to this second X. You may want to try a bit more to the right (around 3.5”) with the 9007 conversion, as like I mentioned before, there is more glare which can somewhat blind oncoming traffic. Test it out at night and if nobody flashes you, you should be good to go. Hi-beams do NOT need adjusting, as they are aimed at the same time as the low-beams.
This is a very thorough write-up, and in all honesty only takes about 20 – 30 minutes to complete (minus the headlight aiming, which can be done at a later time during the night).
The BEST bulbs to buy with this conversion are, without a doubt, the new Sylvania Silverstars. They are the brightest and whitest lights you can buy and project the most light I’ve ever seen from a non-HID system. Look up reviews all over the place – the general consensus is that they are among the best of the best. Just make sure to buy 9007 bulbs, and not the crappy 9004 bulbs that your car USED to take.
hey i was curious about the lights. How long does it take to do the whole switch to the 9007? And also my knowledge about cars isnt as extensive as most other people on this site but do you think its simple enough for me to be able to do it myself?
I would say that if you know where your headlights are, and you know how to cut and strip a wire (and solder, or even twist wires together and use heat-shrink tubing if you are lazy!), then it might take you about 1hr total, including aiming them.
It’s not hard.
MoonScryer,
Nah, it wont burn out the harness the wattage isnt actually as much as it says on the box. its only a bit more. Ive been running my fogs on higher wattage for at least a year. People said you may burn your harness or melt the fogs. But its no problem. 
Awesome thread!!! I just got done doing mine.
Im so happy cause they had a $20 rebate on the headlights, so I only paid like $33 with tax for a pair of silverstar’s.
Nice improvement and I can already tell and its bright out still. Thanks for the write up.
Side note to make things easier for those going to do it:
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I removed the whole headlight assembly to knock off the tab but this is not necessary at all. SImply get a decent knife or flathead (i used my 4" pocket knife) and just cut off the one tab (you do NOT need to knock off 2 tabs). Just look and you will see that there are two tabs close to eacother and the third tab is above those farther away. Leave the two that are close to eachother and just knock/cut off the third tab with a knife/flathead while the housing is still in the car. The first one took me about 25 minutes cause i took out the housing and everything… the second one took me literally 3 minutes.
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No need to cut any wires at all, solder or do any of that. SImply do as da’ meth said earlier and just swap the connectors. It makes it cleaner and easier, no mess.
Overall, for $30, you cannot really beat this headlight upgrade. I think the silverstars are as close as you will get to HID’s (though not close to em, just as close as you will get :))
Had a quick question about the conversion. I switched the wires liked you said but high beam light on the dash comes on. It comes on not all the way, sorta of like when you have a bulb out. Was wondering if anyone else had that problem. They do not seem to be brighter either was wondering if that had something to do with the light being on, on the dash. I’m using Mtec goldenstyle bulbs. Any ideas?
Sounds like you maybe didn’t the wires properly, or one might be kinda half-connected and causing wierd electrical gremlins with the hibeam indicator light.
Double check you swapped the exact right wires and that the connections are very secure and wrapped well in heat-shrink tubing and/or electrical tape.
~Eric
Okay, I vote this as the best TegTip EVER. I just did this w/ a set of new Silverstars, and the diffrence is rediculous!! I dunno if my conversion was more extreme because i’m pretty sure the previous owner didn’t ever change the headlight bulbs, but I got the 9007 Silverstars in there, and my night vision went from 2 yellow spots on the ground in front of my car to daytime!
well i just did one side so i can take a pic of the comparison for you guys… but my alternated just died on me. how ghey… well when i get that fixed i’ll post a pic up 
I just did the conversion, took me maybe 30 mins - it’s still light out so I can’t tell how big of a difference it’ll make, but I’m hoping it’ll be easy to see the results
Also, I used Philips XTravisions instead of silverstars, I hear they burn out much too quickly for what they cost. The Philips bulbs were only 10 bucks a piece so that wasn’t too bad…