I read that you could stuff everything into the housing to avoid drilling the holes. Sadly, I bought my lights literally about a day before Xenon Depot switched their heat sink from the braided style to the fin style, so I have the older braided version. If you do the recommended “flower petal” pattern for the braided heat sinks, it doesn’t leave much room in the housing. I bought pre-drilled replacement covers from a different headlight supplier so I didn’t have to drill my original ones. My Xenon Depot lights have been flawless, but they illuminate the same horizontal distance on the low and high beam setting–they just illuminate farther up vertically on the high beam setting. They are much better than the stock bulbs on low beam, but not on high beam. I believe the newer style bulbs you bought are brighter than my older style, so that may help your visibility.
Like I said previously, if I had to do it over again, I would have gone with the HIDs. The “dome of darkness” headlight system in these trucks was clearly designed for a single-filiment HID bulb–GM just took the cheap route and used the same housing for non-HID applications also.
GM really dropped the ball on the headlights and drivetrain calibration on these trucks. If I could see at night and if my truck didn’t lug and lurch, I would really like it.
