Well since this was working its way down the page I'll move it here and make it a How-To, just need to do some more work on it first.
Lighting 101
Well this is some of the things that I have picked up upon lighting and how to improve it.
Stock Lighting
Well for most of you stock lighting is OK for normal driving. Many of us want more and this is expected as we all would like to be safer. The question that we need to ask ourselves is the added cost worth the added light? If the answer is yes, and if you are reading this than I expect so, then read on.
Some upgrades
(This info is mostly for 9005/9006 headlight systems)
Well first off go and see if your headlight lense is chipped, scratched, pitted or dirty. If so see if you can clean it up. Having the lense in poor shape can severly limit the usable light. If it all checkes out OK continue on with this article and see how to upgrade your lighting.
Option One: "Wiring Harness". One of the best ways to get more light is to make a new wiring harness that uses relays to power the headlights (some cars have a wiring harness from the factory). This might be an issue with daytime running lamps, but there are ways around that too. The problem with the factory harness is that it uses rather small gauge wire and a lot of it, this long length of small gauge wire increases resistance and an increase in resistance in the wire means that "less" voltage gets to the bulb itself. The headlight switch also has a very high resistance that reduces the voltage availabe to the bulb and a harness will bypass that too. By making a harness with relays you can use larger gauge wire directly from the battery to lower the voltage "lost" in the wiring, the relays also have a low internal resistance. The relays are triggered by the factory headlight harness so there are no major changes to the factory wiring. When doing this it is also advised to run a dedicated ground from the bulbs to the battery, this also decreases the voltage that is "lost". I have head that this may lead to a 10% increase in lighting, maybe even more.
Some excelent info on why to use a wiring harness and how to make one:
Wiring Harness
Here is a rough diagram of how to run a wiring harness.
The biggest thing here is if your vehicle uses high beam DRL's, if so this may give them full power rather than the low power they normally run at, in that case you will be blinding drivers all the time. If yours runs low beam DRL's then it isn't such an issue.
Option Two: "Quad Mod". For those of you with four headlights an easy way to get more lighting for the high beams is to do the "Quad Mod", this takes and turns on the low beam lamps when the high beams are turned on. The simplest way to do this would be to add a diode between the high beam wire and the low beam wire. The diode prevents the high beams from turning on when the lows are on. The only problem with this is it may increase the load on the factory wiring enough to blow the fuse, if this happens DO NOT put a larger fuse in place of he old one as this can cause a fire. If this happens your best bet is to use a new harness, in fact using the harness will give you that much more light in addition to the "Quad Mod".
A very rough wiring diagram for the "Quad Mod" when used with a wiring harness (Diode in blue circle). Wiring will be almost exactly the same if not using a wiring harness.
Here is some very good info about the "Quad Mod" and DRL's and AHL's, this info is for Chevy ZR2 pickups but should give you a good starting point for mods.
Quad Mod, DRL, AHL info
Option Three: "High into Low". Putting a high beam bulb in the low beam housing (for 9005/6 and 9011/12 systems). The high beam bulb draws more power and puts out more lumens than the low beam bulb. The only issues to watch out for with this are that it might increase glare from the housing and this will affect other drivers. Some mention the fact that the high beam bulb doesn't have a coating on the tip, while this will increase glare some, very little light actually comes out of the tip of the bulb. If you are worried about it I believe that some have had good luck by dipping the tip of the bulb in some high temp paint (VHT paint, say 1300 degrees, the higher the better). This will take some minor modifications, but nothing hard. Of course this mod with the "Quad Mod" and the "Wiring Harness" will give you even that much more light.
Here is a good link on how to modify the 9005 bulb to fit the 9006 spot:
High into Low Mod
Bulb Upgrades
Well there are a whole lot of bulbs out there that claim to give you more light, in some cases this may be true, but many of these are just gimmicks. I am not going to get into over watt bulbs as like I said many are gimmicks and personally I think there are better ways to get more light than to throw a set of 100 watt bulbs in you headlights. One thing that you should think about before using an overwatt bulb is that it may excede the current capicity of the stock wiring (good reason for a wiring harness
), that and the added heat that is released can melt some housings. Also, ANY bulb that has a colored coating will decrease light output, these bulbs may be higher wattage and that will get back the lost light some but I don't recommend them unless you are using the color tint to tune for a certain driving condition (I.E. yellow for fogs).
"9011/9012": First some figures to ponder about the 9011 and 9012 bulbs. 9005's (high beam bulb) DOT light output spec is 1700 lumens, +/- 12% at 12.8v, maximum 70 watts. 9011's (high beam bulb) DOT light output spec is 2300 lumens, +/- 15% at 12.8v, maximum 70 watts. What this means is that the DOT guidelines for bulbs states that a 9005 bulb has to put out between 1496 and 1904 lumens, the 9011 has to put out between 1955 and 2645 lumens. This says that any 9011 bulb is going to be brighter than any 9005 bulb. The issues here is that it may not be much brighter, if a 9005 puts out the maximum lumens and a 9011 puts out the minimum lumens there will be very little difference in light and both bulbs will meet the DOT requirements, but if you figure that a quality bulb is going to have an output in the middle of the allowable range doing this switch will yield you a 500 lumens increase. It will require a little bit of modifications to the bulb to make it fit in a housing designed for 9005/6 bulbs but it is very minor and can be accomplished in minutes with a file or dremel. The best part of this is that regular 9011/12 bulbs are relatively cheap when compared to high output bulbs. Of course this can be combined with the "Wiring harness",and the "Quad Mod", I would not recomend the "High into Low" as this would be an excessive amount of lumens for a housing that was not designed for it. This may be very blinding for other drivers.
"Silver Stars": These are supposed to be the best standard halogen technology upgrade light bulb you can get. It should be noted that the American bulbs have a slight blue coating and don't offer the increase in lighting that the European bulbs to (about 5% difference I believe), the European bulbs are perfectly clear. I believe that the increase in light from the American "Silver Stars" is about 15% (20% for the European bulbs). I have heard that these bulbs have a limited life span though. One thing that sould be noted about the silverstars is that if they meet the DOT requirements (aka street legal) for a 9005/6 bulb then they cannot put out more lumes than the DOT states, because the DOT requires
as a minimum more lumens out of a 9011/12 than a 9005/6 can put
at a maximum silverstars will never put out as much as a factory 9011/12 (and remain street legal). And of course these bulbs can be combined with the "wiring harness" and the "Quad Mod", I would not recomend the "High into Low" as this would be an excessive amount of lumens for a housing that was not designed for it. This may be very blinding for other drivers.
"HIR" (Halogen Infrared Reflective Technology): These are a new technology bulb that was developed by GE. They use a special coating on the inside of the bulb that reflects some of the heat developed back at the filament, this increases the temp of the filament and that causes it to give off more light. They are used in many factory high beams to complement HID low beam systems. They are supposed to offer quite a bit of increased lighting, I believe in excess of 40%, and do it without pulling any more power from the vehicle. They do this by a special coating on the inside of the bulb that reflects the heat back at the filament and this causes it to emit more "light". Currently there are only two providers of HIR bulbs and these are IPF and Toshiba, although the IPF bulbs may be too big to fit in a regular 9005/6 housing as it is a different design. They are relatively hard to find and can be quite expensive, I have seen them sold for $120 for a pair of bulbs, although I have seen true HIR bulbs on eBay for $30 a piece. Many bulbs may say HIR but unless it has the unique shape (bulbous) and is made by Toshiba it isn't a real HIR bulb (it may even say HIR right on the bulb). One thing to note here is that these are legal 9011/12 bulbs, in fact they were the first to have that designation, and as such they will not exceed the 9011/12 output as far as lumens are concerned. That said most 9011/12 bulbs that are not HIR will probably have an output in the lower range of what is allowed, true HIR's will probably have an output near the top of the allowable range, so it is up to you if the higher price is worth it when compared to a regular 9011/12 bulb that "might" have the same output (but probably not). If you would like more info as to why to only buy the Toshiba bulbs read here
HIR Discussion (go to the 4th page). These bulbs are also supposed to have a longer life than a normal halogen bulb. And again these can be combined with the "wiring harness" and the "Quad Mod", but I would not recomend the "High into Low" for reasons stated before.
HIR Bulbs
Some more great info on HIR bulbs:
HIR Page
"HID": The next and final step, at this time, is true HID lighting. Many of you may think of the HID kits that can be purchased off eBay for a couple of hundred bucks, personally I do not recommend these kits. The standard halogen headlights were not designed to have HID bulbs inserted and 90% of the time will end up with horrible glare that will attract cops and horribly blind other drivers. Not to mention that the components use in almost every, if not every, one of these kits is not of high quality. Your best bet for HID lighting is to do what is called a "Retro", a retro is called that because it involves "retrofitting" factory components into your existing headlights. While a little involved it isn't a bad as it sounds. I would recommend doing a lot of research before going with HID's. A good place to do research is
www.hidplanet.com in the forums section, they also sell components.
Here is an excelent article on why NOT to run HID "kits":
Why not to get a HID "Kit"
And finally for us that are stuck with the old school sealed beam headlights
Sealed Beam Headlamps:
Well there really aren’t many choices to improve the lighting output of the older sealed beams, but there are some things you can do. The first thing I would recommend for sealed beam systems would be to get a set of Wagner "High Output" headlamps (might be the same as the Wagner "Bright Lights"). These have to be the best replacement sealed beams I have ever used. I currently run a H4 conversion headlight with 80/90 watt bulbs and the Wagner’s will kick these things rear. The part number is usually H####HO, an example is: First generation of S-10 used a 6054 bulb, in regular halogen it would be H6054 and in halogen high output it would be H6054HO.
Next you could try a conversion headlamp that converts from a sealed beam to a composite headlamp (type where you can just change the bulb). I have had mixed results with these, the seem to be more for looks than actual light output, but you can then put some high wattage bulbs in them which might improve your lighting.
"Quad Mod", yes you can do the "Quad Mod" to a sealed beam, BUT it does have some drawbacks. First off it will put out ALOT of heat so it is recommended that you put it on a switch so you can only turn it on at highway speeds instead of just having it come on when you turn the high beams on, otherwise you might melt the headlamp if you don't have a good amount of cooling airflow over the bulb. Second it might shorten the life of the bulb, possibly drastically. Finally you will probably wish to at least run a high quality dedicated ground as the bulb uses the same ground for both filaments it will be trying to support nearly twice the amperage than before.
And of course a wiring harness will work just as well on a sealed beam as it does on any other headlight system.
Disclaimer
All upgrades to lighting sould be done in moderation and properly. You could very well do a wiring harness, quad mod, and use 9011 bulbs in both the high and low beams. Now this would put
alot of light on the road infront of you and it may seem that you have made driving safer, but you may have actually made it worse for your self. The issues is that you throw so much light on the road directly infront of you your eyes adjust to the light and this limits your distance vision. Also, using say the 9011 bulb as a low beam may put out excessive glare and this may blind other drivers, remember the actuall housings you are using were designed with a certain light output in mind.
I hope this may help some of you in your quest for better lighting.
and welcome 
I really do appreciate your taking the time to join in sharing the information here! 
