Blubbs

Hey all,

Canadian guy here. Don't hold it against me!

I own a 2010 Maxima Sport in perfect condition with less than 50,000 miles (78,000kms) on it. It's a great car that has had zero issues and I am sure I could keep it for a very long time.

I have a problem with shopping for cars. Honestly, I spend a lot of time every day looking online. But there is nothing wrong with my Max - it's fast, handles very well, has good traction in winter, and is pretty luxurious inside (heated steering wheel is a big deal up here).

I am thinking that instead of wasting tens of thousands of dollars on marginal improvements in car qualities with a new vehicle I could just modernize the appearance of my Max a bit.

Taillights are all good. I was wondering what good options (I'm not handy) there are, that are still available, for replacing the headlights with some cool looking DRL's, etc. The HID's in there are pretty darn good so I don't know the best way to go about it. Can anyone help?

Cheers!

tbm5690

I've seen LED light strips added to the lower bumper outside of the fog light locations. For the headlights, you could do LED bulbs but for the amount of light emitted and appearance HIDs still look good and do a good job...still modern in my opinion, there are plenty of cars still using halogens. You could also add LED light strips to the inside of the headlight housings to use as DRLs.

Blubbs

I agree that HID's on their own wouldn't be too bad, but I would want them to work with the auto headlights function during daytime lighting, instead of the half lit orange DRL's that work based off of lighting the high beams partially.

Is there an easy way to wire the HID's to run in both day and night modes?

blackmax14

there are many people that do that sort of thing, such as ghozt lighting https://www.ghoztlighting.com/

tbm5690

I see, forgot being in Canada you have the required DRLs. I am not aware of how to wire up the headlights to be always on, unless you wired up a trigger switch off of the DRL wires or something. Do you only get the orange markers as DRLs or do your brights also turn on at a lower voltage? I know that my Lexus had DRLs that would simply take the high beams and half the voltage during the day so they weren't as bright. I disabled it by modifying the relay so that they only function as standard high beams. The other option in this case would be to buy a "xenon match" halogen bulb for your brights to modernize the look of your DRLs. Obviously not LED or HID, but a step closer. Hoen is a company that I have gone with for fog light bulbs that match the factory HIDs in color.

Blubbs

Hi, sorry for the delay. I haven't noticed orange markers, only the partly lit high beams that are a very ugly yellowish halogen color. That's what we get in Canada for DRL's. Same as your Lexus.

I actually bought the really white philips bulbs but with the half brightness it still looks very orange.

I replaced the fog lights with white led fog lights that match the HID's well, so this is really the last step.

Thanks for any advice you can provide.

tbm5690

Sounds like LEDs are your best bet, and then disabling your current DRLs. Here is a thread with pics regarding what I was describing earlier as a clean way to do it in my opinion. Just scroll down until you see the strips installed in the lower bumper:

https://maxima.org/forums/7th-generation-maxima-2009-2015/652505-new-drl-fro-maxima-7th-gen.html