2002 Grand Caravan Sport -

I am looking for feedback on aftermarket headlamp assemblies. Has anyone did this and has been running them for long?

My 02 GC headlamps are aging and I have polished them but when viewing them at night I can see the pits not visible to the naked eye are still there and defusing light. Maybe not to a huge degree but its still happening.
I think the polishing is more a cosmetic fix than anything. I really could not see any improvement in illumination. They were not the worst I had seen but noticeable enough for me to address the issue.

So I have looked around at aftermarket replacements and wonder if any of them are as good or better then OE as far as being as strong or as hard of a material?

Just so you know, I am replacing them and installing 100watt lamps with a

Putco 239007HW Lighting Wiring 9007 100W Heavy Duty Harness and Relay kit.

Putco 239007HW Lighting Wiring 9007 100W Heavy Duty Harness and Relay kit.

So no melted wires and the full potential of lighting on high beam. The alternator may not like it @ idle but that will not be often.

I have already done this in 2005 to my 2005 Z71 with amazing results. The kit was made by Kennedy Diesel. The improvement was eye popping. Just plain white light high power, none of that colored nonsense.
http://www.kennedydiesel.com/hb-harness.pdf

 

A trick I found accidentally on my old Intrepid, was crystal clear packing tape. I know it sounds ghetto, but it worked better than any polish I had ever tried. Every year or so I'd replace the tape due to stone chips. But overall it held up well and vastly improved the vision out of those lenses, without having to spend big bucks on replacement assemblies.

Just a suggestion,
Mike

 

I hear you. If the new assemblies last half as long as OE I'll be happy. I'll let you guys know how the 100Watt & harness mod goes.

 

I ordered the Putco harness via Amazon super saver free shipping on Saturday 8/18 and got it on Tuesday 8/20! Mercy, is the Whse down the street from me?

The kit is not as heavy duty as my Trucks Kennedy Diesel booster harness but it is a good improvement over stock. The wiring is 16AWG throughout looking to be at least twice the size of the OE wiring. The relays look to be of better quality than the run of the mill cheap-o relays. Not sure if I like the yellow harness wrap but its not on showcase. I wish there was more length in the section going to the battery but its not a deal breaker. I had to tie wrap the relays to the front of the battery instead of a fender or firewall location. It is behind the hood seal so it should stay dry.

The Kennedy Diesel kit is 14AWG and the solenoids are twice as big. Kennedy Diesel does not make one for the Van so.... The KD kit also comes with a plug & play Diode for a All 4 On High option. When I run the high beams on the truck and there are several road signs about I almost have to dim until I pass = Love It!.

I think the Putco kit is fine and the KD kit is a tad, but much welcomed over kill as a truck should be.

I'm trying not to get my hopes up because of the 9007 configuration having a cover over the front of the bulbs but we will see soon.

The Bulbs I ordered.

 

I just did the same thing on my Jeep Cherokee, Putco harness and new housings and bulbs, it had sealed beam units.
Considering the improvement I started thinking about doing at least the harness to my wife's caravan.
From comments in the Cherokee forums just changing the harness is a big improvement even if you don't upgrade the lights.
Has to do with not running all of the power through the light switch and the voltage loss that happens in the Chrysler light switches.
I didn't bother screwing around experimenting but just switched everything to the 80/100w bulbs.
The improvement on the Jeep is amazing! It's lights were worse than the Caravan but still the Caravan's are bad so I would love to hear about your experience!

 

Thanks.!

 

So how did upgrade go? Any improvement?

 

Heh! It's still going. The OE style assemblies just suck plain and simple. New assemblies and high power lamps don't do squat. They went back.

I went and got kind of over the top exotic on this thing. I have some European Chrysler Voyager assemblies on the way from Germany that are supposed to be a substantial upgrade. Don't ask how much they cost. Not to mention the special custom heavy duty harness I'm having made.

The European-market units for that van are extremely good. Chrysler spent a lot more money on them than on the home-market lamps. The European lamps are quite different. They're made by Zizala (ZKW), an Austrian OEM who make a lot of high-spec headlamps for BMW and Volvo. Much more advanced optics and substantially better performance.

I plan on driving the wheels off this van and am pretty much spoiled by the performance of my trucks lights and drive more at night than the day.

I have confidence the upgrade will be fantastic. They take H7 lamps and I will be installing some performance Narva units.

Not for the weak @ heart or Wallet.

I'll post back when all is said and done with before and after photos of the beams at night.

 

Interesting, so the 100 watt bulbs didn't help. I guess my experience was different since I too changed the assemblies.

 

Maybe your replaced assemblies were in worse shape than mine and the improvement level for you was to a greater degree. Mine were not yellow or cloudy yet and I wanted much better high beams than OE.

I am somewhat of an enthusiast for lighting. The improvement the 100w lamps and harness did for my truck was a WoW factor for me. The same for the Van was not.

Glad you liked it.