I am thinking of upgrading my headlight & foglight bulbs to Sylvania Silver Star bulbs. My question is if I am just swapping-out the bulbs do I have to re-adjust my lights when I am done, if so what is the best way to do it?

 

Head lights wont need realignment. Ther are two metal Tabs on top of the light assembly. Lift those, unlock the headlight and twist it out. Fog lights are a little tricky. Do a search for them, I hear they might need some trimming...

 

Everytime I swapped headlight bulbs - OEM, Silverstar, Eurolite Fusion, HighWattage - I needed to readjust the alignment. The interior filaments on the bulbs were different causing the light to hit the reflectors inside the housing at a different angle.

Fritz

 

Ever since the aero lens headlights were introduced they put 3 tabs on the glass. These tabs lock into the headlight alignment tool. This aero face doesn't move by changing the filaments (bulbs). So no, you do not need to adjust your headilghts after changing bulbs as long as you change you bulb correctly, while the housing stays put on the truck. Just disconnect the electrical plug, turn the bulb retention collar to remove and slip out the old bulb. Reverse instructions for the install.

Will the new bulb be in a different location than the old one. Only if you used the wrong bulb. They are keyed as well as sealed on an aligning flange to be the same. If you replace the bulb with the wrong application then your lights will need to be re-adjusted, but I have no idea how since the Aero lens face has not moved and is correct. I would recommend to just put the right bulbs in and it will be correct again.

 

The bulbs are friggen 9007s. They are the only ones that fit. My lights were aligned with the OEM bulbs. I installed Eurolites and the beams were way off. I reinstalled the OEM and back to perfect. Same when I changed from the Eurolites - after realignment - to Silverstars. Again the light beam was off. As in 3 feet higher at 20 yards.
The headlights were aligned at the dealer with their machine after each swap. And yes, the beams were correct after I got the Truck back from the service department. BTW - headlight alignment is covered under the warranty.

Fritz

 

Like somebody else said, the real reason you needed to realign your headlights after swapping bulbs was that the filaments inside the bulbs - even thought they were 9007's - were different. Many of the "vanity" bulbs out there have pretty fat manufacturing tolerances. The better bulbs - including Silverstars - don't seem to have this problem.

There are a couple of other reasons I've seen for needing to re-aim. I saw one instance where the new bulbs were not fully seated in the housing. I've also seen the headlight assembly not correctly re-seated on the slides upon installation. Hope that helps.