100W Headlight Bulbs?

Car is a 2002 Pontiac Sunfire. OEM headlight bulbs were #9007's 65/55W.

Can I replace these bulbs with a higher wattage bulb, 100/80W, without damaging or melting the clear plastic headlight lens or the socket for the bulb?

TIA,

Larry

Reply to
Larry W
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The wiring is marginal - you would need to wire in relays and connect the lights to the battery through the relays or risk burning out the wiring and/or switches. The plastic headlights will NOT stand the extra heat - even glass optics often shatter from the heat if splashed with cold water - which is why high end replacement headlamps use lead crystal leanses and silvered steel or aluminum reflectors.

I've run 100 watt headlamps - on the rallye car and on several of my street cars in the past - ALL with lead crystal lens aftermarket headlampsafter the first ill-fated try.

Reply to
clare

Technically you *can* do it. At least for a while. I did it on my 92 Explorer. Within a year the socket had melted from the extra load/heat. Aside from that the other thing I believe you would find, based on my experience, is that adding watts to the low beam is of zero value since the low beam is not power limited so much as aim limited, it's not intended to let you see a long way, just needs to illuminate the near and intermediate area and 55 watts is plenty for that. As to the high beams, again IMHO, adding watts will produce very limited benefits since you will still be using the same old optics and its the optics that need help, not the power rating of the bulb. When I had the 100W high beams in my Explorer they really seemed very little different from the OEM wattage bulbs. The whole experiment convinced me that I'll never bother with high powered bulbs in the original optics again. I think my explorer actually had glass housings so there was not a problem with the housing melting, just the socket plug and part of the insulation on the wires.

Bottom line - don't waste your time and money.

Reply to
Ashton Crusher

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