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you shouldn't succumb to peer pressure. Lol. Put it back on
I was planning on taking it off anyways. Haha.,i put it on a year ago when I was planning to to get an RC lift and I knew nothing about Cherokees. Now I'm gonna get a metalcloak lift, so it wouldn't make sense. They had nothing to do with pressuring me to take it off. I just thought this would be a good time to take it off. Lol
I was planning on taking it off anyways. Haha.,i put it on a year ago when I was planning to to get an RC lift and I knew nothing about Cherokees. Now I'm gonna get a metalcloak lift, so it wouldn't make sense. They had nothing to do with pressuring me to take it off. I just thought this would be a good time to take it off. Lol
And good call on that Metalcloak lift. Matson and the whole team are great people. Yes I'm being paid to say that.
Today I installed the Autopal H4 E-Code upgrade on my '99 XJ. I had previously added a wiring harness upgrade from LMC Truck (I did not know about the better & cheaper ebay harness at the time) so installation was about a 15-minute or so job. It's probably a bit ridiculous to have so many photos of such a simple upgrade, it will take longer to write this up than it took to install, but here goes...
I ordered the kit from an eBay vendor in Texas, total cost was about $43 shipped. However, the cheapest and slowest possible shipping method was used which was a little disappointing given that 1/3 of the total cost was the shipping charge. (The lights were ordered December 1st and arrived December 14th.)
The lights arrived intact in minimal packaging:
Autopal is not made in China...
...and neither are the H4 bulbs. I stuck with standard wattage since the E-Codes are not really legal for road use and I did not want to attract undue attention from "the Man" due to overly bright lights.
Opening up the box, we find minimal packing but it was good enough to get them here in one piece from India, via Texas.
There are no instructions provided, but none are really needed since assembly is very straightforward. The unit looks very well made. The rubber seal on the back will hopefully be enough to keep moisture out...
...since with this design there is no other seal.
The bulb just clips into place, it only fits one way, easy peasy.
Then the rubber seal is installed on the back. I made sure to press the seal down around the bulb to give it the best shot at keeping moisture out of the housing.
Time to install the lights. On my Cherokee only 3 of the screws for the retaining ring would break free. (Same deal on both sides.) I didn't want to use extreme measures which might make matters worse, so just lifted the ring up and out of the way enough to swap out the bulbs. (In the photo the turn signal housing is loosened up since I managed to drop one of the retaining ring screws and had to fish around back there to get it back.)
To prevent corrosion I always put some dielectric grease into the connectors.
And here it is installed. Looks very stock, if you didn't look closely at the codes you'd be none the wiser.
The only issue I ran into is that as others have reported these housings are a little bit of a loose fit. I used dabs of hot glue inside the retaining ring to take up the slack, now they're nice and tight. The idea is from this video about 6:10 in:
The next thing that needs to be done is to check the aim and adjust as needed. Excellent instructions on doing this can be found at http://www.danielsternlighting.com/tech/aim/aim.html. I set up my garage door according to their instructions...
...then pulled back 25 feet to put the XJ into position for the test.
I waited for daylight to dim a bit so the beam pattern could be seen. According to the instructions, for E-Code lights the cutoff should be right at the lower horizontal line. As it happens the aim was very close as it was so I did not make any adjustments.
The results? Here's the low beam from the original sealed-beam setup with the wiring harness upgrade:
Here's the Autopal H4 E-Code low beams:
Here's the results on high beam, original versus upgrade:
The results of this upgrade are really nice for an outlay of just $43 and a 15-20 minute installation. (A bit longer if you take time to check the aim, which you should do.)
bugs me because the rings rub on the edge, and took the paint off letting it rust. I liked it better out the front like he has on his website. But he doesn't seem to update that.
bugs me because the rings rub on the edge, and took the paint off letting it rust. I liked it better out the front like he has on his website. But he doesn't seem to update that.
12-15-2015, 04:45 PM
