Headlights for Ford F-250

Ford F-250 Headlights

Navigate dark roads and poor weather conditions with confidence using the right type of Ford F-250 headlights. More than an aesthetic touch, headlights help you drive safely and see other drivers, and they let other drivers see your vehicle through darkness or low visibility. The following five questions and answers address key product info about Ford F-250 headlights.

"IP" refers to a rating that stands for Ingress Protection. Although it's not exclusive to Ford, many Ford headlights and compatible models by other brands posses IP ratings. The marking is an Ingress Protection Rating specifying to what degree a labeled product is enclosed and protected from foreign bodies. The first number denotes intrusion protection. Number 6 indicates protection against dust that may cause harm.

The second number denotes moisture protection. Number 5 indicates protection against water sprays from all directions. Ingress Protection Ratings are interchangeably identified as International Protection Markings. They conform to the International Electrotechnical Commision (IEC) standard 60529.

LED, or light-emitting diode, is a light source containing a two-lead semiconductor. When the two leads meet electricity, electrons recombine with electron holes, releasing energy as light. Standard LED headlights on a vehicle may contain several bulbs arrayed in a formation.

With chip on board (COB) LED, a small chip houses the light-producing mechanisms. COB entails mounting several chips on another material, yielding an LED that appears seamless and unbroken. It looks more like a lighting panel and less like a series of illuminated dots. Both types of LED are bright and energy efficient.

The F-250 accommodates all types of available assemblies, providing the bulbs are manufactured to be compatible. Fortunately, you've got plenty of great choices:

• CCFL (cold cathode fluorescent light) uses ionized vapors and phosphor coating to create light.
• Xenon bulbs contain xenon gas through which electricity jumps, or arcs, traveling between two tungsten electrodes.
• HID (high-intensity discharge) headlights work like xenon, but the bulbs contain either xenon or vapors of mercury, and the electrodes are closer together.
• Halogen contains a halogen gas. The gas prevents bulb darkening and extends the life of a tungsten filament that emits light when electricity courses through it.

There are available kits that let you convert your current headlight bulbs to just about any type on the market. You can convert your existing headlight bulbs to LED, xenon, HID, and halogen. You can convert a single beam into a hi/lo beam or into a bi-xenon HID. If you convert, and the new bulb seems too bright, you can also convert back to a previous bulb type, such as bi-xenon back to LED.

The F-250 truck accepts both sealed beam and composite assemblies. There are even conversion kits that let you convert from sealed beam to composite. A sealed beam is essentially a one-piece headlight containing the reflector, bulb, and lens inside an airtight, watertight housing.

The composite assembly is not a one-piece headlight, so you can remove and replace just the bulb as needed. Hybrid composite assemblies are also available, in which the housing and its components resist water and dust.