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Jeep Headlight Shootout


In-Pro Car Wear diamond-cut conversion headlights

 Headlight Shootout In Pro Wear Diamond Cut Headlight

Part number: CW7007We opted to get the tri-bar-style, diamond-cut bulb. All the light housings use the same reflector; the differences being: with tri-bar, without tri-bar, or tri-bar with skull.

Pattern: 6 (high beam), 9 (low beam)

Light output: 7

Ease of installation: 10

Installation notes: These headlights installed just like the stock ones. With the same size and shape as the stock lights, there were no problems in installation at all.

 Headlight Shootout Pro Wear Diamond Cut Headlight Jeep Install

DOT compliance: Neither the bulb nor the housing are DOT. If they are, it's a well-kept secret-no stamp or marking was seen.

Testing notes: There's a distinct horizontal cutoff on the top of the low-beam pattern on these lights. The high beams have a distinct cutoff on the lower edge of the beam. The cutoffs overlap by roughly 5-6 inches at 30 feet. We adjusted the low beams for 38-40 inches on the top of that horizontal cutoff. On low beam, it worked well and only resulted in getting flashed once or twice on a longish drive on a dark two-lane road.

Unfortunately, these lights need to come down a bit for the high beams to be really effective. At the 40-inch mark, the high beams were just too high. But when we lowered the lights to where the high beams were dead on (the lower edge of the beam just on the road ahead), the low beams ended up just over 30 inches at that same 30-foot mark. That made the low beams just a skosh too low to be usable at highway speeds.

There might be a happy medium for someone who uses both high and low beams frequently, but for us, we'll stick to that 38-40-inch mark.

Also, in the middle lane of a five-lane highway, we were able to light up both shoulders well. They would probably be able to do so on a seven-lane highway too. The width of the pattern is really usable. There isn't a deer or cop lurking on the shoulder that we won't see with these.

Look At Those Bulbs!

 Headlight Shootout Ipf 7 Inch Round Lights

The IPF 7-inch, round conversion lights are the only ones whose price didn't include bulbs. Rather than order another set of 55-watt low-beam/60-watt high-beam bulbs, we decided to try out the IPF X51 Fatboy bulbs. Sure, the name isn't really politically correct, but it does describe the bulbs well.

Like the fat kid that got hazed in school, these bulbs are big down low. They're an 80-watt low beam with a regular 60-watt high beam. The literature claims they're equivalent to a 190-watt low beam/150-watt high beam.

At first glance, we were sure we had read that wrong. The low beam is a higher wattage than the high beam? Yep, it is indeed.

Then we got to thinking that they might be onto something. We use our low beams all the time. About the only time we use high beams is at speed off-road. So maybe having more usable light for 98 percent of our usage is a good thing.

We put them in the IPF housings thinking for sure we were going to get pulled over and hassled by The Man. We adjusted the lights just like the other five pairs with the normal-wattage bulbs, and were weren't even ticketed for obnoxious lights and didn't get high-beamed by oncoming traffic once.

As for light output, yeah these things kick butt. Having 25 watts more power than other bulbs on low beam really does matter. Of course, the extra wattage might mean that your stock Jeep wiring is screaming in agony, but we didn't pop a fuse or melt a connector with these like we have in the past with higher-wattage bulbs.


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