Hey guys so I just painted my headlights, did everything gloss black on the inside (including the shroud) it looks great but my lights are dim as hell now to the point where I drove with my brights on all night last night. I'm wondering how others deal with this. I have all stock bulbs as well. I was thinking maybe if I switched the fog bulbs out for LEDs? Any suggestions?

 

LEDs may help, but I don't think it will help that much.

May wanna change out your D2S bulb to a 5k

 

I think I am going to change out my D2S bulb for sure but it seems like the problem is that the projector shroud simply doesnt project the light anymore now that it is black. What about getting a foglight HID conversion kit? Does anyone know if those will basically act as regular lights after that conversion?

 

Did you reassemble it correctly? Painting the inside shrouds should not affect light output. Only tinting the lens would kill that.

 

Have you tried to adjust the lights? Maybe it is just pointed down. Just use a screwdriver and turn the adjustment ****. It could just be messed up because you took it apart.

 

Yeah I don't know how I couldn't have assembled it correctly, everything only goes in one spot.

 

you can try rewiring your connections to see if anything was plugged in loose, i dont thing painting headlights would affect the brightness of the lights

 

I think something is off. Theres no reason why you should have lower light output than stock except maybe on your blinkers since the reflector is painted.

 

Hmm so strange. I will check it all today. I just dont see how both lights would have the same problem though. The lights are still very bright if you get down on their level, just seems like it's not spreading correctly.

 

do you have active steer headlights?

 

No just stock 2009 setup. The only thing I've done with the headlights is painted them which I did yesterday. It seems like only the HID D2S light output has changed after the painting but they equal in their "non-output." It also seems like all of the light coming out of them is going low as in the most light output I see only goes out about 6-7 feet in front of the car then it just dies out after that. Could it be that the bulb is loose and pointing down maybe?

 

oh wow ok i think alignment may have just gotten a bit off during the disassembly. If you search on here theres a thread on how to realign your output to factory specs.

With HIDs theres no reason why painting would effect your output at all. and your fog housing isn't painted for those to be dimmer than before. I think once you adjust the angles you should be good.

 

Awesome thank you for the info gonna check this out right now.

 

Problem fixed. I went in through behind the fender and turns out the hid bulbs in both headlights wasnt secured properly. It was basically hanging there so I just redid the assembly pretty much. All is good thanks for advice guys.

 

Glad you got this fixed! As we all pretty much said, there was just no way for paint to affect the light output so something must have gone wrong in reassembly.