Anyone have any experience installing an HID kit? Any suggestions as to which brand, etc. would be useful. Im not a professional mechanic in any way, but i can change oil and other basic tasks.
my vehicle: 2008 Pathfinder SE


Thanks in advance.

There are quite a few posts around here that address the lousy headlamps. Some folks claim to have good luck with HID's but I'm very particular about lighting and was not impressed. The optics in the OEM housing is horrible and you could add 10X brighter bulbs and it would not accomplish much because the light is scattered. The only way I could get decent coverage with HID's was to aim the headlights so high that they blinded everyone.

The HID's on high-beam were also very poor because of the type of bulb the PF uses. I would say high-beams were even worse than a standard bulb.

Nobody makes a replacement projector housing for the '08+. The only option would be to have the OEM housing modified with projectors. If you could do it yourself it might be doable under $1,000. The shops that do this were around $2,000. I passed.

The high-beams were my biggest complaint so I ended up adding Hella Blackmagic 500's in the grille. They fire with the high beams and I have them aimed high and wide to get out over the stock high beams. I've thought about upgrading them to HID but that requires modifying the housing and I haven't had time to mess with it. I also changed the bulbs to Sylvania Xtravision which seemed to have slightly better coverage. Not much though.

Compared to my wife's Acura MDX with factory HID's...it's still not even close. Her high beams are tremendously bright, but the low beams have a very strict cut-off that really shortens the distance. Lighting is very good though within the area covered.