Hi all, a new addition here to your forums. We just purchased an 09 Prius for my wife. Love the car with one exception. The OEM headlights blow. I was wanting to upgrade them to an HID kit, or was wondering if a Toyota HID OEM kit can be purchased and installed, as we know some came from the factory with OEM HID's. Any comments or suggestions are appreciated. John
For the money I would pay a retrofit company to retrofit your headlights or a new set of OEheadlights with real projectors.
You can try contacting: Lightwerx HID Projector Headlight Retrofit for Subaru, Honda, BMW, Scion and More | LightWerkz.net Black Flames Customs BlackFlameCustoms : HID Projector Headlight Retrofits, Retrofit Service & Parts They both have performed very nice work. You can read more about them and retrofitting in general at HIDPlanet.com. That is THE place to learn about HIDs and projectors. Here is my thread on retrofitting for the GenII Prius. http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-ii-...16-headlight-projector-retrofit-hids-max.html
Have you tried changing the bulbs to a non OEM halogen? Like Philips X-Treem or Crystal Vision Ultra or Night guide? Here is a link to the website: Philips Automotive Lighting You can buy the bulbs at NAPA, or my favorite Amazon.com and they're not expensive. I've used all 3 bulbs, the X-treem are super bright, but only lasted about 3 months (I do a lot of night driving and early morning driving so you might get 6 months from them) I've used the Crystal vision Ultra, which are way brighter than the stock ones. I currently have the Night-Guide bulbs that have a Tri-Color effect to them. These are bright, and reflect yellow light towards traffic, and crystal blue to the right towards highway signs. Another thing to try is adjusting the headlight beam up a bit to shine more light down the road -- make sure not to have them adjusted up too much or you will blind on-comming cars and your brights will light up the tops of the trees.
Here's a link to a youtube video showing how to remove the headlight assembly I've tried changing the bulbs with-out removing the assembly, but my hands are too big to fit back there! It's easier for me to remove the entire assembly swap out the bulbs, and reinstall. It takes me about 30 minutes to for both bulbs from start to finish. There are three bolts, one up-front near the bumper, one up top near the fender, and one from the side. When you watch the video, she tries to remove the assembly and can't get it out, then she removes the bolt from the side, and the assembly comes right out. When I reassembled everything the first time, I reinstalled the assembly with only two bolts, and didn't reinstall the side bolt. The metal bracket at the front of the headlight assembly ( they look like fingers) slide into the front bumper cover and that helps keep everything stable. So the third bolt really isn't necessary and makes it easier for the next time I need to swap out the bulbs.
