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Replacing HID Headlight housings - Options?

Discussion in 'Gen 2 Prius Main Forum' started by Augustus88, Jan 29, 2017.

  1. Augustus88

    Augustus88 Junior Member

    Joined:
    Feb 17, 2016
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    Location:
    Birmingham, AL
    Vehicle:
    2008 Prius
    Model:
    Three Touring
    Long story, so skip to the TL;DR if you don't feel like reading...

    My 2008 Touring with HIDs had a ballast failure due to water intrusion into one of the headlight housings. I opted to replace both worn factory headlight housings with affordable DEPO branded replacements from Amazon. The new headlights looked beautiful and were easy to install and such - Two big problems though. First, the motor that extends and retracts the anti-glare shield when you use the brights does not extend the glare shield enough to fully block the brights beam, resulting in some of the light from the bright beam escaping. This blinds oncoming drivers, and is illegal. Both DEPO headlights had this defect. I was able to fix this issue by swapping in my factory original anti-glare shield and motor, but one problem still remained - The beam pattern is hilariously bad. And I mean bad. Sealed beam headlight from 1980 bad. Splotchy, brighter in random areas, dark in others, and no light sent off to the left or right like the stock lights do. And the brights? They don't really shine out, more of down where your lights are already shining.

    Anyway, the DEPO branded replacements have to go. I have sourced some Toyota original new HID headlights for $250 each from a certain website, and I am willing to pay that much to escape the DEPO death trap lights. However, if I am spending that much already, I would rather upgrade to high quality projector lens headlights that accept my stock HID ballasts and bulbs.

    TL;DR - I bought crappy third party headlight lenses and they suck - I am going to replace them. I would like to upgrade to projectors if there is a drop-in option, if not I will buy Toyota original headlights.

    Anyone know of good drop-in HID projector headlights for the second gen?