Hey, guys.
Adam here with americantrucks.com.
And today, we're taking a quick look at and installing the Black Projector Headlights,
available for all '09 to '14 F-150s without the Factory HIDs.
Now if your truck did not come with HIDs from the factory, you should be checking these
out if you're looking to ditch the factory traditional, otherwise really boring and outdated
headlights at the front end to pick something up that's a lot more modern, more attractive
and honestly just something super impactful.
The headlights here are a big change-up from the factory design, getting rid of some of
that more reflective chrome interior, switching it up and getting that stealthy black interior
look.
Now because of that, you're getting that matte black look with a polycarbonate clear lens
that puts all the light output out there into the road for better visibility.
It's also got built-in high and end low beams in the projector styling, which are also brighter
and more attractive than your factory headlights.
And then finally, you have that daytime running light or DRL light bar, which adds that touch
of modernization to the front end.
Very similar to the newer gen F-150s that you see with that factory headlight, now you
can get on your older '09 to '14 gen.
The good thing about this is it doesn't compromise quality.
It's got all OEM-quality materials and an absolutely mint fitment here on your factory
front end.
Now it is a plug-and-play design, no splicing required, no cutting, no wiring, all that
good stuff is done for you right out of the box.
All you gotta do is plug it into the factory location.
You will be reusing your factory turn signal bulb, you have a new amber reflector light
on the side as well, and then finally, like I said, the high and low beams are built-in.
Now I'm gonna show you guys that in just a little bit.
Note that the pair does come driver and passenger side for right around 375 bucks, which in
my opinion is a worthwhile price to pay for something that has such a huge impact on your
exterior appearance specifically the front end look.
Now the install, I'm gonna give one out of three wrenches on our difficulty meter.
Literally anybody can tackle it in the driveway at home with about 30 minutes from start to
finish with very simple hand tools.
All you need is a ratchet and a 10-millimeter socket and you can get the job done.
I'm gonna show you every step.
Let's get to it.
Tools used in this install include an impact gun or a ratchet and a 10-millimeter socket.
First step, pop your hood, grab a 10-millimeter socket.
We're gonna remove three bolts holding on our passenger side headlight first.
There's two up top and one here on the side, so get those guys out of the way and we can
pull our headlight out.
All right.
From here, you're just gonna grab your headlight, pull straight back.
Now before you pull too far away, you want to disconnect your harnesses.
Now there's three you can see here, I'm just gonna pinch and pull back.
Same thing here.
There you go.
Now we can set our headlight aside.
All right, so we got our factory headlight off of the passenger side of our '11 F-150
behind me, it's on the table next to our black projector headlight here and I want to take
you through similarities and differences between the two.
Let's start with some of the similarities.
Now, overall fitment here is gonna be exactly the same, these were designed using the original
CAD data from Ford to make sure that it is a direct bolt-on, same mounting brackets on
the top as well as the side here that you can see comparing them from factory to aftermarket.
Now the durability of the lens is also gonna be the same.
You have an impact-resistant polycarbonate lens just like your factory headlight and
the overall housing construction is made of the same ABS plastic, so altogether that's
what we'd expect from quality.
Now as far as design, that's where things start to get switched up.
Your factory housing here, clear lens, chrome reflective interior, very traditional, in
my opinion, very outdated.
It could use a good update, it looks very traditional.
Moving over here, we have that clear polycarbonate lens, so still similar but it is going to
have a black interior housing, getting rid of some of that chrome reflectivity that otherwise
looks pretty tacky, at least in my opinion, the black is gonna be a lot stealthier.
The clear lens there means that every ounce of your lighting output is getting through
to make sure you have the best visibility possible.
Now inside of that you're seeing an LED-wraparound DRL design, the DRL being that daytime running
light to give you just another accent piece that is a lot more modern.
A running light is something we see on those newer gen F-150s sort of replicated here in
your black projector headlight.
The projector-style here, it gives you the high and low beam separately in a much brighter
bulb, giving you a more direct and focused light beam output to make sure that the road
visibility is gonna be a little bit better than your factory headlights.
On top of that, you have reflectors on your side as well as your turn signal, you'll be
reusing some of those factory sockets here and I'll show you what that looks like in
just a second.
Finally, let's flip this guy around just to quickly give you an example of how the plug-and-play
design makes the install a lot easier.
You can see the wiring already on the back of your high and low beams and then over here
we'll be transferring over the factory socket.
So what do you say right now we twist out those factory bulbs, swap them on over here
and then we'll get to the install.
Now for the actual headlight bulb, we don't need to swap that over, that's all built-in,
the connector is gonna go right into your factory harness.
But down here what we're gonna do is twist this guy out of the place.
And we're gonna move that over, this is your turn signal bolt.
So let's pop that guy into the new housing, you're really just twisting and locking it
in place.
From there, we are gonna twist out this bulb on the side, smaller portion here.
Now as you can see it has a bulb already in that socket, we got to pop this bulb out because
we're gonna be swapping that with this connector here.
So put that bulb down.
From here, we're gonna pop this guy into that socket.
It's more of a plug-and-play connector.
And then from there, we can seat this guy into the housing just by twisting and connecting.
One thing to make note of here is the wiring inside there has black and green.
When we link this up to our vehicle harness and we plug that guy and you just want to
make sure the ground in the positive are meeting together.
So where the black side is on that wiring, you want the black side on your factory harness
to meet up and I'll show you guys that in just a second.
Let's toss this table off to the side and get to the install.
All right, so now we can start plugging things in.
We're gonna take that brown connector from the factory harness and plug it right the
brown socket here.
The plug-and-play harness from your new black projector headlights will plug straight into
the factory harness, you can see that here.
And then finally, there's that bulb here on the corner that I mentioned lining up that
wiring.
So let's take this guy out of the socket.
I'm gonna quickly show you what I mean.
Now the harness that we plugged in here has a black and the green.
Looking at your new harness, you'll see there's a black and a yellow.
Just make sure that the black and the black are on the same side.
So we see this here on the left, this here on the left, they match up.
That's your ground matching your ground and your power matching your power.
So if they don't match, unplug, flip it around and make sure they match.
Connect this guy and then drop it into place in the new housing, twist to lock it into
place.
From here, let's mount the headlight.
All right, so from here we can take our headlight, line this guy up, seat it down into place.
Let's grab our factory bolts and bolts her down.
So these top two guys I'm just gonna loosely tighten by hand, grab my socket, tighten them
down.
All right, and then the last one here on the side.
Just want to make sure you're taking it easy on the plastic, you don't want to over-tighten
it and crack them, so just get them nice and snug and then a quarter turn after that.
Once you have that guy in place, test out your lights, make sure everything works.
If not, you might want to check your wiring, make sure the black and the black wires on
both sides match up.
From there, repeat on the other side.
That's gonna wrap up my review and install for the Black Projector Headlights, fitting
all '09 to '14 F-150s without Factory HIDs.
If you want to get these, you can do so right here at americantrucks.com.