Before doing something more than a simple drop-in bulb replacement, I'd recommend new Eagle Eyes (ideally Depo if those are still available, but I consider Eagle Eyes to be a good aftermarket brand as well) or professionally refurbished OEM Ford housings, which is what I got. Otherwise, you're just directing the output of bright bulbs through cloudy housings that will scatter the light and produce suboptimal results. At some point, repeated polishing will have removed so much material and no longer be smooth on a microscopic level that it's better to get new housings.
Also, apply clear headlight film to the housings so the lenses on the new housings don't get sandblasted and cloudy over time. As you would do with PPF, replace the film every 5-10 years so you have a fresh new wear layer while your headlights still look new underneath. Headlight film is basically PPF but thicker and with UV protection. I've had my retro since 2017 and the housing lenses still look immaculate.
I wouldn't count on LED projectors as an option. I haven't paid much attention to how that technology has progressed, but Morimoto definitely doesn't have anything that fits in the '96-97 headlight housing, and most LED bulbs are too cool of a color temperature for my liking anyway. The M LED 2.0 is 6300K. I prefer to stay in the 5000-5500K range, which is a benefit of HID bulbs because you have more flexibility to pick bulbs in your desired color temperature.
Higher-end LED drop-in bulbs are probably fine these days, but I still don't really trust them for low beam use. They'll never perform as well as a projector retrofit in terms of total lux output.
My HID projectors are the Morimoto Mini H1 7.0. The current version is the 8.0. I can easily find its dimensions at The Retrofit Source, but I'm not having as easy of a time looking up the dimensions of the 7.0 for comparison. TRS doesn't list the 7.0 anymore, but it's supposedly 6 mm shorter overall. However, the difference should be in the collar depth, because the housing depth is listed as the same as the 8.0 (115 mm).
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