I traded my 2000 GLE in for the 2009 S/SV. The headlights are beyond terrible and in my neighborhood, street lights are necessary but not plentiful. I can't see at night! Anything beyond 2 mailboxes in front of me is the edge of the planet. I was thinking about getting the Sylvania Silverstars like I had in the GLE but I've been told that won't help because these are projectors? Any suggestions?

 

Drop a Xenon kit in there. So damn cheap these days no reason not to.

This is assuming you have halogens. You appear to have a model that does not exist. Never heard of a S/SV. It is one or the other as far as I know.

 

Believe it or not, that's what the paperwork said when I got it in july from nissan. I don't know how to distinguish the difference. It has projectors though. Is the Xenon kit something that will be easy to do?

 

Just take a phillips head screw driver and raise your headlights, I know mine came aimed way too low when I first got it. I honestly have no idea how the person who had the car before me was able to deal with such little light down the road.

 

Here you go.
http://www.lightwerkz.net/

 

How do you mainly raise the lights?

 

I refer you back to the picture in this post b/c I can't find the ones acdna posted, http://forums.maxima.org/7th-generat...ignment.html#4

At the upper left-hand side of the headlight is where the screw is to raise or lower the aim of the headlights. Now when you're looking under your hood on the driver's side, just beneath where the hood "rests" when it's closed you should see an oval shaped hole. If you have HIDs you will see a yellow sticker warning about high voltage, halogen does not have this sticker next to it. If you look down into that hole at an angle you should see that screw in the picture from the side, it will have some teeth large enough to fit a phillips head screwdriver into to turn. Just stick the screwdriver in there and turn away, I forgot if clockwise was up or down, but I did mine at dusk up against a wall, it only takes a few minutes to do. For the passenger side you'll have to remove that long plastic piece and the hole will be in the same place.

 

I think it is agreed here that proper headlight alignment is a safety issue that needs to be addressed.
If your headlights are that far out of alignment I would also be concerned with past accident damage to the cars front end. There's no normal reason for your lights to be so far out of wack.
Even my simple Eibach drop didn't require an aiming re-alignment....just sayin.

 

Location and situation enter into this. I had to lower my headlights because, where I live, there is always traffic coming the other way, and these Xenon headlights that come with the Premium package will toast eyeballs fairly quickly.

When most of the cars coming toward you flash their lights at you, and you are creeping at half the speed limit in slow traffic, you know your headlights are aimed high.

I have a 25' X 30' garage with level outside apron, so parked the car just outside the garage door with the motor runniing and the headlights on and adjusted the lights using the pattern on the far wall of the garage till it looked like the pattern I had found either in the Owner's Manual or online (I forget which - been 4 1/2 years). Then I lowered the left beam slightly, and turned it very slightly toward the right (away from oncoming motorist's eyes). Then I lowered the right beam very slightly. Now I do not get flashed.

These lowered beams work great for me because we have to drive slowly at night because our county leads the state of Georgia in deer-car collisions. We hd 886 such collisions last year, with two people killed. And we are one of the smallest counties in the state. We have seen as many as seven deer in our yard at one time.

 

I think the rule of thumb when dealing with projectors is a 1 inch drop on the lower step @ 25 feet.

 

I got a Carfax on it before I spent my hard earned money in Slique. No accident damage at all. I also followed your directions about aiming the headlights. They were in perfect alignment on my garage and match the same height as my sisters Impala. My Dad says that the bulbs are ok but they apparentlyust do a bad job. I used a headlight restore kit thinking that might help but they just don't put out enough light. My headlights got washed out by a stock 1980's Cutlass Supreme last night. I have to do something. I do way too much night driving for it to stay like this.

 

If it's just the bulbs, sounds like a pretty easy upgrade/fix.

 

I have been used to HID's the past 4 years and when I sold my previous car and picked up my 2012 Maxima SV it had the projector housings with the H11 bulb. The light output sucks so I installed an aftermarket HID kit and it is 100 times better to be able to see at night now. You could try a different bulb and see if that helps but you might just be throwing money away that you could be putting towards an HID kit. Good luck man.

 

HID's here I come. Any suggestions?

 

http://www.theretrofitsource.com/

 

The car also didn't come with fog lights and I really want them. What's the best option?

 

Get the upgrade kit. Not terribly expensive and it comes with everything you need. Very easy install.

http://www.courtesyparts.com/nissan-...300_8455_8679&

 

See post number 5