New 2012 Quest Owner

[dp3dp]

Well I am the proud owner of a 2012 Titanium White NIssan Quest SL. We bought it for $23.998 with 33K miles on it. In the deal we were able to include a class III trailer hitch. So not to shabby. We are coming from a 2006 Kiwi Metallic Honda Element, which we loved but just outgrew as a family. Being a new owner there are a couple of questions I am hoping the Nicoclub community can answer.

I must say so far I am extremly impressed with the Quest, the CVT is extremly impressive. Shortly after purchasing the vehicle we put alittle over 3k miles on it with a vacation to Wisconsin and Upper Minnesota and it was a great vehicle to drive for long distances when comparing it to the Honda Element.

Coming from Honda there were a couple of places on the internet that offered great prices on Genuine Honda Parts and Accesories Bernari Parts was one and HandA was the other. I have been try to find a good source other than the official Nissan site to find parts as good prices are there any recommendations for accesories and parts from the Nico Club?

One thing that I did to my Honda Element was upgrade the headlights by installing Xenon (HID) Projectors and Bulbs. I noticed that on my Quest it has what looks like a Xenon HID Projector and bulbs but turns out that the bulb is halogen. Doing a little reserach I see the NIssan offers the Xenon (HID) and Halogen Version for the Quest but without the AFS. What I find interesting is that the same part number according to parts.nissanusa for the overall headlamp housing is used for both Xenon and Halogen.

The question I have is given that the headlamp housing is the same for both Xenon (HID) and Halogen, if a Xenon bulb and ballast are purchased would the projector housing work? I am mainly concerned about the heat that is produced using Xenon and the "globe" being burned. In adgdition does anyone know the measurements for the lens used on the projector? As I would change out the lens as well.

If I were to do this upgrade I would likely use parts from the retro fit source as the Genuine Parts for the "modification" are a little pricey.

Lookign at the diagram from parts.nissanusa this is what I came up for part numbers for the Xenon System. Being new to Nissan if I am wrong please correct me.

Xenon Ballast (CONTROL UNIT ASSY-XENON HEADLAMP) 28474-8991D
Xenon Rubber Bulb Rubber Cover (COVERHEADLAMP) 26030-CN90A
PACKINGRIM,HEADLAMP 26033-CD010 (I have No idea what this part would do, maybe attached the ballast to the headlamp?
Xenon Bulb 26297-9F510

Thank You in advance

[Rogue One]

For parts, I can recommend CourtesyParts.com and NissanPartsZone.com

[dp3dp]

Thank You Thank You. After digging into this a little more it looks like the projector lens is 2.25" or 2.5". I am still trying to figure out if Nissan in 2012 made a universal Headlamp housing that accepted both Xenon and Halogen. I'm not sure if I can purely trust the parts page identifying the same number for both headlamp housings. Seems a little odd to me.

[dp3dp]

Well after doing a little more digging on the Nissan parts page I was able to find out that there is actually two different part numbers for Xenon and Halogen headlamp housings. Given the price of the xenon headlamp housing I will likely do a retrofit with parts from retrofit source. Even the price of the xenon headlamp housings from junk yards was more expensive. Yes you get an OEM part, but for a cheaper price you can get a superior performing projector with just a little more work up front.

[earlmart]

I have the same year Quest and we find the headlights are not powerful enough and when driving we sometimes put on brights in order to see. Replacing the lights is very pricey as the dealer states you have to remove a ton of stuff just to get to the lights and the car is pretty old so don't want to spend that money to replace. One person had recommended taking lights to a detail shop which then sand papered the lights gently and cleaned them up to get the yellow off of them which helped mildly.

Any tips?

[VStar650CL]

The reflectors on Quests in those years get the same problem with "oxide blindness" as the gen5 Altimas, try pulling the bulb and cleaning the back of the focuser lens with an alcohol swab on a stick. If the lenses are clouded you can generally improve them a lot with a buffing kit, there are lots of them out there. Lastly, you might consider an LED conversion. H11 LED's are plug-and-play replacements for halogen, and a quality kit will usually give you double or more the brightness of a halogen. I always steer people to Diode Dynamics SL1's, they're bright, have excellent thermal engineering, and they're the only ones made in USA.