I’ve had a box of SBG headlights sitting in the garage for a few months now; as much as I want that sweet, sweet brightness and even beam pattern, I haven’t brought myself to install them because they just aren’t quite OEM-y enough for my taste. And actually, I find the OEM lights with Sylvania Silver Star bulbs to be pretty good for light output — it’s the noisy, repeated and blotchy beam pattern that I can’t stand.

So I got a Black Friday promotional email from Pettit today, and in it they advertise LED headlight replacements for the FD. This is news to me — are these new or have I just managed to miss them? Anybody tried them? How’s the light output, beam pattern and color?

 

I put LED bulbs in my old Mazdaspeed Protege. The low beams were nice and bright, but for some reason the high beams kind of sucked. Seemed like they just couldn't throw light out like Silverstars. I don't know if that had something to do with the bulbs being LED, or maybe the shape of the headlights for the Protege, but I ended up back to regular incandescent bulbs.

They fit great though, and the low beams were comparable to HIDs. Kinda a cool little fan sound that comes out of them too.

 

So I did try a set of these headlights, and they're pretty good. Light output is improved over OE (although not hugely), high-beams work well, and the beam pattern is much cleaner. The only real issue I have personally is they appear to be around 6000K color temp which is way bluer than anything else on my car, and most other cars on the road.

Not bad though!