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My 2009 Chevy Malibu LS

2K views 6 replies 7 participants last post by  repairman54 
#1 ·
Thought I’d share how far I’ve come with my malibu. Have done a good amount of work now with “blacking” it out to clean it up and make it look a lot better. Just finished smoking the tail lights and putting in LED’s around the whole car and very happy with it. What do you think?
 

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#3 ·
'Bu looks nice, I like the color of it.

For what it's worth, I think it's stupid and should be completely illegal to black out your headlights or taillights. They're like they are for a reason, for sight and to alert drivers behind you. I just shake my head when I see people do that. I like to add to my night vision, not hinder it.
 
#4 ·
Car looks nice! I'm not sure the name of that color, but it looks really good on your Malibu!

Tommy is right about the full tint. I personally did cutouts around the bulbs for my reverse lights and left the other side of the light un-tinted. I tinted the border of my front lights to look more "aggressive", while keeping the visibility.

I quite like the look of my LEDs in the cabin. It was a good, cheap mod. Do you have LED reverse lights? It is hard to tell - the pictures are a little small.
 
#6 ·
The DRLs in the Gen7 use the low beams at reduced power using a method called PWM. If you replace the low beams with LEDs you might experience a little noise but otherwise it should be fine electrically.

A couple years ago I bought and installed the "Pro Light" LEDs and they suck. I was impressed at first and bought a second set for the high beams. They scatter the light way too much, affecting oncoming traffic as well as offending the mirrors of folks in front of me. Signs mounted high up on trusses spanning the entire highway would reflect from way back, but the usable light was not what you'd think. The glare from the road directly in front of me was so bad that I had to do something.

I started a project of converting to HIDs but never finished.

Lately I've been running the other LEDs shown below in my low beams. They ones in the image are a stock image from the internet and not the H11 replacements. Mine are the actual H11 replacement Morimoto 2Stroke 2.0 LEDs. Way better light control and spread! I can recommend these for our Gen7 non-projector housings. Those others above I can't.

I like them enough that I don't intend to return to halogen bulbs.
 

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#7 · (Edited)
HID's in my car for a long time. Because my car has the glare shields in front of the bulbs there is a nice focused beam unlike unshielded bulb headlight housing glare machines. That's why stock halogen lows have that blacked out tip on the end and the high beams do not. Not all housings have glare shields. Daytime running fuse is pulled out, if I want my lights on I'll turn them on. LED's in a lot of housings do not put out a good beam pattern, in a split bulb system like ours they are better but in a single low/high bulb application forget about it as the high's are useless if the lows are properly aimed. Plus I need the heat of the bulb to melt off that snow and freezing rain.
 
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