Headlights & Offroad Lights

If you're buying an older used van like my 2004 GMC Savana, there's a good chance your stock headlights are terrible. Upgrading them is one of the cheapest and most impactful safety improvements you can make.

Replacement headlights

Looking for cabin LED lighting (strips, puck lights, reading lights) instead? That's the Interior Lighting page.

If you're building out an older van (pre-2015 or so), your stock headlights are probably terrible. Older vans like my 2004 GMC Savana came with basic halogen reflector headlights that were mediocre when new and have only gotten worse with age. The difference between those and modern LED replacement headlights is night and day, no exaggeration.

Upgrading to LED headlight bulbs or a projector-style LED headlight assembly is one of the cheapest safety improvements you can make. Bulbs run $30-80, full assemblies $80-200, and the visibility difference on dark roads is dramatic.

Important: make sure they're legal

There's a regulatory gotcha worth knowing. Most drop-in LED bulbs sold as "DOT-approved" carry a self-applied manufacturer stamp but don't actually meet FMVSS 108 — NHTSA has stated that LED retrofit bulbs in halogen reflector housings don't comply with the federal headlight standard. The reason is physical: a halogen filament is a tiny point source the reflector was designed around, and an LED chip sits in a slightly different spot, scattering light upward and blinding oncoming drivers. If you're only swapping bulbs, look for LED kits specifically engineered for your housing — that gives you the cleanest beam pattern, even if the legality stays gray. For a setup that's both legitimately DOT-compliant and noticeably better at night, replace the whole headlight assembly with a sealed projector LED unit stamped DOT for your van.

If you have a newer van (2016+) that already came with projector headlights or factory LEDs, you probably don't need to worry about this - your stock lights are likely fine.

Bottom line:

If you're driving an older van with dim stock headlights, replacing them should be one of the first things you do, before you even start the build. Cheap, easy, and the night-driving difference is hard to overstate.

Offroad lights

Light bars and auxiliary offroad lights (pods, spot lights, flood lights) are popular in the van build community. In my experience, they earn their keep on rough forest roads with hairpin turns at night. You can see what's around the bend before you commit.

That said, a couple things to keep in mind:

  • They're not legal on public roads. Offroad lights are for offroad use only. Using them on the highway can get you a ticket, and they'll blind other drivers. Most states require them to be covered or switched off on public roads.
  • If your headlights are bad, fix those first. On an older van with dim stock headlights, you get way more benefit from upgrading your headlights (which you can use everywhere, all the time) than adding offroad lights you can only use occasionally. Spend the $50-100 on headlights before spending $50-200 on a light bar.
  • Skip them unless you actually drive forest roads at night. If you frequently camp on remote unpaved roads after dark, they earn their cost. If you mostly stick to highways and paved campgrounds, you don't need them.

If you do want offroad lights, cheap LED pods and light bars from Amazon or Vevor work fine for this - you don't need to spend $300+ on name-brand offroad lights for occasional use on forest roads.

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