97mbe320

Hello, my husband bought me a 2004 GX470 6 months ago and I want to seek advice to anyone who can help me with changing my headlights. The headlights on my car is not so bright and I can't see very well and having a hard time driving at night. I called several Bay Area Lexus dealership to find out what I should do, they told me that I have to buy an after market bulb to fix my problem. They were not really helpful, perhaps because I was woman who doesn't really know much about cars. So that is one of my problems...
Secondly, just a few days ago, I was cleaning my both my side mirrors, because of fog, all of a sudden, the mirrors doesn't go down anymore when I shift the gears to reverse. Do I need to go to the dealership to have it fixed?
desperately need help.. thanks.

phunboy

Changing headlight bulbs is a simple job... maybe 30 minutes max. A few covers may need to be popped off to gain access to the rear headlamp assembly, but easy nonetheless.
As for your pivoting mirrors, make sure your mirror switch in not set in the middle. It needs to be set drver or passenger side in order for then to pivot down in reverse.

jditom

Go to xenondepo, they are a vender on this forum and buy some HID lights from them. The OEM lights on the GX are worthless IMO.

There is a defrorst button for your GX so you should not have to clean them. Try putting your mirror adjustment button in different positions to see if that makes them work. Do they work with the manual power buttons? If not it could be a fuse or relay.

97mbe320

Thank you so much for your response. I really really appreciate it. I will check out your advice when I get home. Thanks again. Happy Holidays to you both.

Kansas

First of all verify that the plastic headlight lenses are clear. If they look foggy/opaque, they can be temporarilly cleared with a product like Meguiar's PlastX and permanently restored with a multi-step product like CrystalView -- both are available at auto supply and discount stores.

If your GX was sold early in the model year, it could be over six years old. By six years old, the plastic headlight lenses on my 2000 LS400 were getty quite foggy and even my HID headlights didn't light up the road very well. 30 minutes spent with a Crystal View headlight restorer kit made the lenses look like new.

Installing an aftermarket HID kit on your GX sounds like overkill. Do research before you go this route unless you are a "car nut" like most of us on this forum. There are lots of different HID kits ranging from pretty good to absolutely awful and dangerous.

Some of the supposedly brighter aftermarket headlight bulbs are higher wattage and/or blue tinted -- both have drawbacks like melting your wiring and providing less instead of more light.

The best and most widely available aftermarket brighter halogen headlight bulbs I've found are the clear capsule Sylvania Xtravision bulbs -- a 2-pack at Walmart is around $20. Per http://www.sylvania.com/ConsumerProd...otiveLighting/ , your 2004 GX470 uses bulb type "H11" for the low beams. The Xtravision bulbs I put in my wife's Camry provide a noticable improvement in light output.

not sure

i had great results from just aiming the headlights upward a small bit. it only required removing the plastic panel across the front section to gain access to the adjusting screw.

i forget which direction aimed the lights up, but aiming them against the garage wall and a few turns had them showing more of the road ahead without blinding drivers coming from the other direction nor drivers i'm behind.

cheap to try! the stock headlights seem plenty bright, just seem conservatively-aimed from the factory.