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Headlight Comparisons

Everyone agrees that the stock lighting on XJs flat out suck. To help correct this problem I made a new headlight wiring harness for my white XJ. When I was done, I wanted to take before and after pictures to show the results. I figured that while I was at it, I should compare 3 low cost lighting solutions.

The 3 headlights I tested were

• Wagner’s (don’t know model – they were on the XJ when i bought it)
• Sylvania Silverstar – H6054ST – $20/light (Advance Auto)
• GE High Output – H6054HO(2B1) – $10/light (Wal*Mart)

I didn’t have any of the conversion headlights available at the time so that’s why they weren’t tested. I wanted to test the GE lights because they seem to always be brought up in the Silverstar threads so I wanted to see for myself how they stood up to the Silverstars.

Each row is a different set of headlights.

• row 1 = Wagner (OEM?) lights
• row 2 = Silverstar lights
• row 3 = GE lights

Each column is divided as so:

• left column is low beams
• right column is hi beams

Internal to each picture:

• the left light is running off of the stock OEM headlight wiring harness
• the right light is running off of the home made upgraded headlight wiring harness

My impressions on the wiring harness:

• the voltage drop on the stock harness was very noticeable whereas it was undetectable (with my equipment) on the upgraded harness
• no doubt it outperforms the OEM harness.
• the all of the lights emit very noticeably more white light than the stock harness allows

My impressions on the different lights:

• Wagner lights:
• no matter which harness was used, they flat out SUCK

• Silverstars:
• gave off the whitest light of all tested lights
• had, in my opinion, the best pattern

• GE:
• interestingly enough, they performed very favorably against the Silverstars, when both were connected to the OEM harness