2014 Seirra Denali Poor Night Driving Lighting

[bdbake01]

Yepper.

[haider320]

I think my headlights are bad ass on my sierra. I have owned a bunch of vehicles; and I rate these headlights as one of the best.

 

On a dark road; with my lights on, I can get reflections from signs a 1/4 mile away. With the brights on, I can see pretty far.

 

I have a nice solid/line light pattern. My lights are not scattered like some are saying theirs are like.

 

Don't know what's up with some, but mine are excellent.

[bdbake01]

You have a freakish truck then. They work, but only barely.

[Spurshot]

In my opinion the factory lights don't "scatter" too much. My lights are highly focused and project a long way down the road. But they dont have much side lighting. They're just 2 tight narrow beams.

[GTD]

Think Spurshot says it right.

 

The headlights are fine on a highway, or as long as the roadway has good reflective markings. There is very little side lighting and it makes it difficult to see in many circumstances not everyone lives in a city.

 

My old 03 Silverado had far better lighting even with crazed lenses. I believe Escalades had HIDs back in 04. We're in 2014, a $50,000++++ truck shouldn't have to be modified by owners to have decent night lighting!

 

GM trollers what say you?????

[Stars_Fan]

I think my headlights are bad ass on my sierra. I have owned a bunch of vehicles; and I rate these headlights as one of the best.

 

On a dark road; with my lights on, I can get reflections from signs a 1/4 mile away. With the brights on, I can see pretty far.

 

I have a nice solid/line light pattern. My lights are not scattered like some are saying theirs are like.

 

Don't know what's up with some, but mine are excellent.

Mine are also just fine. Sure they are a step down from factory HIDs my last few cars have had but I'm not scared to drive down dark country roads.

[bass mechanic]

In my opinion the factory lights don't "scatter" too much. My lights are highly focused and project a long way down the road. But they dont have much side lighting. They're just 2 tight narrow beams.

i agree and to that point I think what bothers me more than anything about the OE lighting is that it wasn't too long ago that I was driving a narrow mountain road with a lot of tight curves. the beam pattern is so narrow that you get almost no side lighting and when making turns I was turning into blackness making it very dangerous on curvy roads at night.

 

and to Spurshot, ill be posting pics soon as I just ordered my TRS kit and FXR 3.0 projectors. I will be doing a DIY this week. after a lot of research I will be cutting the back off the light assembly, removing the projectors from the rear and reinstalling as this seems a much easier and less messy affair than taking the lenses apart and dealing with the permaseal.

I have some ideas that I believe will make this swap so easy that everyone will be doing it.

I am also thinking about making some brackets to make the swap easy for mounting the projector. I may end up going to a machine shop if there is enough interest and selling the brackets to TRS

im going with 5000k bulbs. this will be my 4th retrofit so I am not a total noob at this kind of thing.

[Clocked92]

Ok I understand the headlights suck but before I decided to buy a GMC, I looked at all the truck brands and forums. It seems any truck with the projector beam headlights without HID's is awful (looking at you Ram!).

 

Ill probably end up putting an HID Conversion in but I'm also looking for places to mount a couple LED light bars. I see Rigid industries already has brackets to replace the fog lights with their Dually type lights. Anyone put a Led bar or 2 on their truck without it looking out of place?

[AceTango]

Before I bought my truck, I did a lot of reading about how bad the stock lights were. Well at least I was not surprised when I drove at night for the first time. I really did not want to make any major modifications to a less than month old truck, but I felt the lights were that bad it was a must.

 

I just had my headlights retrofitted with the Morimoto D2S 3.0's. Let me tell you that the difference is amazing. I too did the fog light mod and now when the high beams I can see everything in front of me. The low beam output is spectacular and is much better than my OEM Acura TL lights. The cut off is crisp with great color. I wanted everything to look stock and have longevity. I chose OEM Phillips 4300K bulbs with OEM Denso ballast. I've learned a lot on this forum so I'd figure I'd share my mod.

[ChrisNJ]

Add me to the list of haters. I've owned every GM model truck since the 80's, and these are probably worse than the 80's sealed beam lights. First nighttime drive I was shocked how bad they were. I literally had to slow down below the speed limit on a rural road. I thought I had something wrong with it until I found most others had the same issue. I would certainly call it a safety hazard. I put a HID mod in and at least I can see now, but the stock projectors do not allow for correct low to high beam adjustment. So as of right now I point one light lower than stock to get the highbeam down to a respectable level, and leave the other stock to get decent low beam light. If I could adjust the shutter height I could get these stock projectors with aftermarket HID bulbs to work well, I just haven't had the desire to rip apart the lenses to see if I can adjust the shutter height. I will most likely be adding aftermarket driving lights soon, so then I can adjust the stock projector on highbeam down, but then the lows would point way too low, so the driving lights would do that duty.

I will be PM'ing Jennifer my complaint for whatever it does.

I might add, that I love the new '14 a lot. Hands down the best truck GM has ever built, it is that good. Just the lights really are so bad to be dangerous. I will also add that the '07-'13 trucks (GMC) had the best OEM lights I've ever had in a truck, Didn't have to add or change anything, they were great low and high.

[Spurshot]

... I will also add that the '07-'13 trucks (GMC) had the best OEM lights I've ever had in a truck, Didn't have to add or change anything, they were great low and high.

 

 

I agree, my 08 had great lights.

[GTD]

Hi GTD,

 

We always appreciate both the positive and constructive feedback, and can assure you that we do take this feedback quite seriously. With your permission, I'd like to feed it back to our engineers and design team, but prior to doing that, we'd appreciate any additional info you'd be willing to share. If you're comfortable, please private message us with your VIN, your name, and any additional thoughts related to your Sierra. Down the road, it may be helpful for us to set you up with a truck engineer to share your feedback and suggestions. Again, thank you for taking the time to share some additional thoughts with us.

 

Sincerely,

 

Jennifer T.

GM Customer Care

Jennifer T.

 

Thanks for your interest in this matter. I took the advise of 67chevyman and went to www.recalls.gov. I was surprised to see only 15 complaints logged in on the 2014 Sierra; however, it wasn't surprising at all to see that 7 or these were concerning poor lighting. Suggest as you've mentioned engineers and design teams need to be involved with this before a serious occurrence happens to a driver or a pedestrian due to poor lighting.

[67chevyman]

Jennifer T.

 

Thanks for your interest in this matter. I took the advise of 67chevyman and went to www.recalls.gov. I was surprised to see only 15 complaints logged in on the 2014 Sierra; however, it wasn't surprising at all to see that 7 or these were concerning poor lighting. Suggest as you've mentioned engineers and design teams need to be involved with this before a serious occurrence happens to a driver or a pedestrian due to poor lighting.

Thanks for doing it GTD. If everyone would do it, that would force GM to actually address the safety issue. The dealer claims they haven't heard of the problem, but I personally know people that have complained to them about it.

[wblanier]

How about starting a petition in addition to the recall complaint form?

 

https://www.change.org/petitions/general-motors-address-the-lighting-issue-in-reference-to-poor-quality-and-build-of-headlight-assembly?recruiter=139450665&utm_campaign=mailto_link&utm_medium=email&utm_source=share_petition

[amxguy1970]

Two points on this, first I would like to see a poll from the complainers on their previous light set up. If a bunch of people who are complaining had either upgraded headlights on their previous truck/suv/car (changed the bulbs to a brighter set up or HID) or they currently have a car/truck/suv with a HID set up then no doubt this is a step back and seems a lot worse than it really is. It would be like eating a good mid grade steak for a while and really enjoying it and thinking it is pretty damn good then going to a high end steak house and having a $200 steak. Of course it will spoil you and you realize how good it is but that doesn't make the previous steak any worse when it was pretty good before. Just curious what the numbers on that would be.

 

Second, as many have stated their GMT900 had great headlights, a clear lens halogen set up. Everyone today is so caught up in how something looks or appear (very materialistic) they have to have what looks cool or looks fancy/highend (hence the luxury truck). Halogens worked great were cheap, win win. But they don't look as cool as a projector lens and they had to have that which as many have noticed throw a nice narrow beam but don't do so well at scattering a wide beam. To balance costs with out going to a full HID set up they added these for the look. You got the look of an HID housing without the cost or light output. My GTO had a similar set up, when combined with the fog lights worked fine. I would rather have a halogen setup on most anything. I have driven these new trucks at night with the projector set up, they aren't bad at all. For sure not a "safety issue", I think that term is just thrown around to try and get some traction to get them redesigned. If they are that bad, how did people drive at night with sealed beam headlights?

 

If it were me designing these trucks, I would throw in an HID kit on the SLT, LTZ, Denali and High Country and pass the costs on to them, no need to make the working truck versions more expensive in-spite of a few. Do away with projector setups and keep the halogens; problem solved.

 

Tyler