John Deere 345 HID headlight upgrade

woodmeistera1 · May 6, 2011

I recently purchased a used but nice '97 JD 345 mower. The headlight leads had gotten near the muffler and were melted which I set about to repair. When I pulled out the factory headlights I discovered they are just regular filament bulbs like you would see in an auto tali light. I looked online and and saw a halogen upgrade kit but it is not available for my tractor. I have upgraded all of our family vehicles with HID headlight conversion kits and wondered why I couldn't do the same on my Deere. I had a couple kits that I changed out on the cars so I set about making them fit the 345. Basically I cut a round aluminum disc from an old street sign and drilled a hole through the center to allow the hid bulb to pass through. Then I ran some small self tapping screws around the rim of the bulb to hold it on the disc. Then I inserted the disc with bulb attached into the hole in the back of the 345's headlight housing and ran two more screws through the plate and into the rim of the housing. Connected the hid ballasts with terminals from the auto parts store and fired them up. You have to see these things to believe them! I can see every blade of grass within 40' of the front of the mower! Absolutely incredible. And since I had the HID kit already all I spent was a few dollars for the terminals. If you had to buy the HID kit you can get them as cheap as $40. And for as much as they would get used they would outlast five mowers.