Few parts impact the day in and out of owning and driving a Jeep more than your headlights. Whether you spend all of your weekends out on the trail or your Jeep never leaves the pavement you still spend a huge amount of time driving at night. That’s why having an excellent set of headlights its so important. The reality is unless you are running a brand new JL the stock headlights are terrible and you will be blown away by how much a good set of LEDs can change your driving experience.
Earlier this year we put together a video highlighting the 5 things we absolutely hate about the Jeep Wrangler and the stock headlights are at the top of the list.
Our friends over at Extreme Terrain offered to send over a set of Raxiom LED Headlights to review and we couldn’t be more impressed. We spend a huge amount of time driving on rural mountain roads and spend a ton of time off-road either in the mountains or in Utah’s remote desert. The stock headlights have no redeeming qualities, worst of all is how little they help with peripheral view. We are constantly encountering livestock and wildlife on our adventures often rolling up on them completely unaware. With limited peripheral light we often do not see them until it is too late and if they decided to dart out in front of us an accident would be unavoidable.
Enter The Raxiom LED Headlights.
With Cree LED bulbs you are getting a premium LED which is essential. The aftermarket is full of low quality corner cutting LEDs, and while they may get you by in some instances we do not think going that route for your headlights is a wise plan. If the low budget LED spot light goes bad no big deal. But if a headlight goes bad while deep in the mountains and you end up hitting a moose… big deal. The Raxiom LEDs put off a 6000k color temperature which is very white offering a much more clear view than the stock tungsten colored headlights in the JK. Best of all these lights are plug and play and take less than an hour to install.
Tips for installation:
1. Give yourself an hour.
2. Make sure to have a flat head screwdriver or a punch tool to remove the pins holding the grill on.
3. Be careful with the factory connectors which can get brittle over time. We ran into a little hiccup removing our connector holding the turn signal in place breaking the clip which made removing that connection much harder than it needed to be.
Installation Process
The folks over at Extreme Terrain have put together a detailed video showcasing how to install the lights.
Simply put:
1. Remove clips holding grill in place
2. Remove factory electrical connection to front turn signals.
3. Remove grill (You can just pull it forward enough to have access if you would like)
4. Using the T15 Torx remove the 4 bolts holding in the factory headlight housing.
5. Remove the factory headlight electrical connection and pull lights out.
6. Place new headlights into position, reattach the electrical connection.
7. The New Raxiom LED headlights come with an anti flicker module which has a little bit of extra wire. We recommend using a zip tie to secure that extra wire.
8. Tighten the 4 bolts in a crossing pattern to secure light.
9. Place the grill back on and re-insert clips.
10. Using the T15 Torx adjust the headlight beam pattern up or down if necessary.
How Do They Perform
The first thing we wanted to try was see how well they worked on a dark mountain road. We headed for American Fork Canyon which offered the perfect testing environment. The low beam puts out over 2200 lumens and the high beam puts out over 3600 lumens. This means you are going to get a lot more usable light than your stock headlights.
The increased peripheral light cannot be overstated. The Raxiom LEDs offer a nice wide beam pattern that allows you to see the side of the road so well. This brings a lot of comfort and confidence when on remote mountain trails or desert tracks. Additionally because you have so many extra lumens you can see much further giving you more time to react to on coming obstacles.
We have been running the Raxioms for 6 months now and our only regret is that we didn’t make the upgrade a lot sooner. They come in at right under $300 which makes them a relatively affordable upgrade that is well worth the investment. If you are looking to upgrade your headlights we highly recommend the Raxioms.
