I have had my C5 for a little over 3 months. During that time I have been living with headlights that are horrible. Even with the brights on it is difficult to see an a dark road. I was at the local Vette shop (Frank's Vettes) last week for some HVAC work and asked for a recommendation for a headlight upgrade. Frank pointed out that the retracted headlights often get overlooked during washing at they might just need to be cleaned.

I took a look tonight, and boy was he right. Headlights on, back to park, and go to take a look. It was shocking. The headlights were so caked with dirt, they basically looked black.

Got out the Simple Green, and a few minutes later they looked new. Amazing how things start to work right when properly maintained. Duh!

 

Nice....good to know

 

Simple fixes are the best!

 

At least it didn't cost much to fix the lack of light problem. Funny how when detailing a car the old saying out of sight, out of mind sometimes comes true.

 

Glad some fixes dont cost much!!!

 

Prior to going with a full HID in a projector (just because I wanted to) I was amazed at how much just correctly aiming the stock lights and changing to Silverstar (regular halogen) bulbs did. The car had plenty of light then......like horsepower....I just wanted more but properly aimed with good bulbs = so much better

 

It's funny how everyone complains about the C5 headlights and I never had an issue with them. I actually find them quite bright. Were they different on Canadian cars, by chance?

I do keep the lenses clean and waxed. Maybe that has something to do with it?

Recently read a blog where the owner replaced the standard halogen bulbs (9005, 9006) with HIR2 bulbs(9011, 9012) and it solved the low intensity problem. Supposedly the HIR bulbs are much brighter and plug right in with a minimal modification to one plastic tab. Anyone try it?

 

Thank you. I never tght of checking headlights

 

I've owned a ton of pop-up headlight cars before my C5 and honestly I'm quite surprised that so many neglect or forget to actually clean the headlights. I guess I'm just fairly well used to ensuring that I pop them up while cleaning, scrub them down real fast, and hose them off. When I purchased my C5 I noticed that one part of the car that was neglected was indeed headlamps, and so I cleaned them up and installed new bulbs.

Remember that the overall effectiveness of headlight bulbs like the low beam 9006s decrease after around three to four years of daily driver usage. Even if the lights still put out light and work they should probably be replaced to replenish their effective light output.

If you're looking for a cost effective upgrade to the headlights you may look into upgrading to HIRs. Not HIDs, HIRs - Halogen Infrared Reflective bulbs. These are bulbs that with slight modifications of the set tabs will seat into the C5s housings, and do not require usage of a ballast or similar like with an HID setup. HIRs used to be fairly expensive, but they have come down in price considerably as they are now used for more modern OEM application. Below is link to a good blog post that is C5 Corvette specific about this modification and you can find similar guides for other cars that use the 9006 and 9005 bulbs.

http://blog.brianmoses.net/2013/11/a...-corvette.html

 

You know, you're right I have never cleaned mine.

 

Yep!

 

I clean my lights every time I wash my car. Just the O.C.D in me. anyways, here is a great inexpensive option you may want to consider also, My lights (even when clean) were just not very bright, So I looked on youtube about this issue and sure enough there was an answer.. Just buy new super white halogen 65 watt high beam replacement bulbs...I know but wait. They are a lot brighter than the stock low beam bulbs but they are also aimed lower than the high beam bulbs, Thus giving you a brighter low beam without blinding oncoming traffic, I did this over a year ago and have had no-one flash their lights at me yet for mine being too bright. one thing you have to do though is before you install them into the lowbeam sockets you must get an exacto knife or something like it and take off the male notch of plastic that is for the high beam female socket. Once you scrape it smooth you then can just plug it in the low beam sockets, wallah...brighter low beams without the high cost of changing everything. It make a huge difference. Its really easy to do, I did both of mine in less than 15 minutes. I bought my 4 pak of phillips 65W super white bulbs on ebay for under ten bucks shipped right to my house. Good luck with whatever you choose to do. CorvetteBob