What kind of headlight bulbs do you use?

[Stan the Man]

Not to help beat a dead horse, but if I flashed every HID light that blinded me I would be one flashy guy. I don't flash them because I know it's not their high beams, and flashing them will likely get me the high beam treatment. Not worth it.

Basically I don't think not getting flashed is a solid indicator of your possible offensiveness to other drivers. (and yes I am aware that I too made that statement earlier, I retract it)

Huh, I guess I gave the horse a little ********** after all.:sombrero:

All that said it is very apparent what vehicles have real HID either factory or well done after market, and they are not a problem.

I flash everybody with glaring HID's with my highs and spots :sombrero: Its ridiculous for my to have lights in my eyes a couple feet above everyone else.

 

[Hilldweller]

So what is the best solution for those of us with older domestic vehicles with horrible lights.

Go on Candlepowerforum and poke around.
Seek and ye shall find...

 

[brianjwilson]

Not to help beat a dead horse, but if I flashed every HID light that blinded me I would be one flashy guy. I don't flash them because I know it's not their high beams, and flashing them will likely get me the high beam treatment. Not worth it.

Basically I don't think not getting flashed is a solid indicator of your possible offensiveness to other drivers. (and yes I am aware that I too made that statement earlier, I retract it)

Exactly. You would be flashing your lights all the time. The truth is that so many people just stopped fighting it because flashing your hi beams isn't going to fix their HIDs. On the off chance that they have a functional low-hi HID setup you will just get flashed with brighter lights.

 

[R_Lefebvre]

While it is certainly true non-HID lenses will scatter the light and it is illegal, it is also true that many people have retrofitted HIDs and produced satisfactory results (i.e. not blinding other motorists). And many have installed them with poor results as well.

That's my stance on this. This is not an all-or-nothing discussion. Yes, while *technically* HID conversions are illegal, in some cases, the results are perfectly fine, and that's all I really care about.

All that said it is very apparent what vehicles have real HID either factory or well done after market, and they are not a problem.

I'm very much annoyed by very many factory HID setups. That's why I kinda stopped caring about offending everyone else, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

So what is the best solution for those of us with older domestic vehicles with horrible lights. my 97 f350 puts out pathetic amounts of light, even the highbeams are scary on dark roads. I wouldn't be surprised if an HID conversion would generate horrible results for others, and I doubt a really good bulb is going to help overcome the ancient plastic lens that can't be easily cleaned and crappy design.

Do I just give up and add a set or two of good driving lights tied in with the headlights? after doing some reading

What type of lamp do you have on that? If it's a sealed beam, you're probably in luck with an E-code replacement lamp. If it's an aero lamp, then there might not be much you can do. Sometimes you get lucky and the aftermarket has some options. Otherwise, I think driving lights are best option. Yeah, it sucks in town because you can't use them but then, with street lighting, you don't need them as much anyway.

Exactly. You would be flashing your lights all the time. The truth is that so many people just stopped fighting it because flashing your hi beams isn't going to fix their HIDs. On the off chance that they have a functional low-hi HID setup you will just get flashed with brighter lights.

I've never lost a light battle.

 

[Hilldweller]

I've never lost a light battle.

I'm thinking of installing an LED "punisher" light on a lightbar. You know, 11,000 lumen or so ---- have it pointed strategically at oncoming windshields and use a momentary-on button. I'll see the bad HIDs coming at me, time the attack, and BAM. I'll fry their retinas with my photon torpedo.
http://www.foxfury.co.uk/

:Wow1:

That'll learn'em.

 

[Wes Craiglow]

I'm thinking of installing an LED "punisher" light on a lightbar. You know, 11,000 lumen or so ---- have it pointed strategically at oncoming windshields and use a momentary-on button. I'll see the bad HIDs coming at me, time the attack, and BAM. I'll fry their retinas with my photo torpedo.

:Wow1:

That'll learn'em.

Hella 4000 Euros work great for this. But I only typically 'punish' folks when, after repeated attempts to get them to kill their brights by flashing my own factory brights at them, they refuse to comply.

Never failed to get my point across.

 

[craig333]

So what is the best solution for those of us with older domestic vehicles with horrible lights. my 97 f350 puts out pathetic amounts of light, even the highbeams are scary on dark roads. I wouldn't be surprised if an HID conversion would generate horrible results for others, and I doubt a really good bulb is going to help overcome the ancient plastic lens that can't be easily cleaned and crappy design.

Do I just give up and add a set or two of good driving lights tied in with the headlights? after doing some reading - Here driving lights are only allowed to be on when the highbeams are on so thats basically never in town. Fog lights can be on all the time and headlights can even be off if fog lights are on and conditions warrant. lots of aiming/height requirements for both of course.
The first thing I did on the truck when I bought it 5 months ago was replace the original bulbs dated spring of 97 with a set of silverstars. A huge improvement but not close to good enough now that winter is really dark and ugly.

I feel for ya. Would like to improve mine but theres nothing but chinese crap out there. I emailed Daniel Stern http://www.danielsternlighting.com/ and he replied I was flat out of luck. He wasn't aware of anything decent for my Dodge.

 

[craig333]

I'm thinking of installing an LED "punisher" light on a lightbar. You know, 11,000 lumen or so ---- have it pointed strategically at oncoming windshields and use a momentary-on button. I'll see the bad HIDs coming at me, time the attack, and BAM. I'll fry their retinas with my photon torpedo.
http://www.foxfury.co.uk/

:Wow1:

That'll learn'em.

That'll make two blind drivers on the road. I feel the temptation too but its not really a good idea.

 

[atavuss]

on my 04 Taco I was using Silverstars. I tried the Silverstar Ultras but I liked the regular Silverstars more. downsides with the Silverstars was that they would only last around a year before burning out and I would get a lot of people flashing their high beams at me even though I was using the low beams, they are bright!
sold the 04 Taco and I have a 09 Taco with the stock lighting for now.

 

[Hilldweller]

on my 04 Taco I was using Silverstars. I tried the Silverstar Ultras but I liked the regular Silverstars more. downsides with the Silverstars was that they would only last around a year before burning out and I would get a lot of people flashing their high beams at me even though I was using the low beams, they are bright!
sold the 04 Taco and I have a 09 Taco with the stock lighting for now.

From CPF regarding colored light bulbs; explains a little bit about why your bulbs burned prematurely and why people flashed their lights at you:

Well, let's talk about colour filtration. The visible spectrum consists of all the colors of the rainbow: Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and indigo + violet. Glowing filaments produce a whole lot of light in the red-orange-yellow-green wavelengths, and relatively little light in the blue-violet wavelengths. To put very rough numbers on the matter, a middle-of-spec 9006 bulb operating at 12.8v produces 1000 lumens, of which approximately 250 are red, 250 are orange, 250 are yellow, 175 are green, 50 are blue and 25 are violet.

Now, suppose you want to add a filter to the glass that makes the light look bluer/colder. How does it do that? Well, there's no such thing as a filter that adds light into the beam passing through it -- filters can only suppress light, not add it. So if we can't add green-blue-violet light, then the only way to get the light to look colder is to suppress green-blue-violet's opposites, which are red-orange-yellow. If we want the light to look, let's say, 20% colder, we suppress red-orange-yellow by 20%. Looking up above, we see that we've got a total of 750 lumens' worth of red, orange and yellow. So, cutting this by 20% leaves 600 lumens, plus essentially all of the bulb's original green-blue-violet output of 250 lumens, so we've now got a bulb that produces light that looks 20% colder and produces 850 lumens.

Now, 850 lumens happens to be the minimum legal output for a 9006 (which has a spec of 1000 lumens, ± 15%). Unless we're an evil fly-by-night company that really doesn't care about quality and legality, we can't produce a bulb that produces only the bare minimum of light, because half our production will be 849 lumens or less just on account of the variances encountered in mass production. So, we have to put in a high-luminance filament to try to counteract some of the filtering losses, but we still have to come in under the max-allowable-wattage spec in DOT or ECE regulations.

So, let's say we build our 9006 with a high-zoot filament that produces 1200 lumens. That's too much for a legal 9006, but we're going to block some of those lumens with our coloured filter (blue glass). This 1200-lumen filament produces, let's say, 300 lumens red, 300 lumens orange, 300 lumens yellow, 210 lumens green, 60 lumens blue and 30 lumens violet. Now we put that same blue glass over it, which suppresses red-orange-yellow by 20%. Now we've got 720 lumens' worth of red-orange-yellow after filtration, plus 300 lumens' worth of green-blue-violet. That gives us a 910-lumen bulb, which is enough above the 850-lumen legal minimum that we can run the bulb and even if some filaments only produce 1150 lumens instead of 1200, we're still legally OK. Of course, we still only have 910 lumens instead of 1000, and our 1200-lumen filament is going to have a significantly shorter life than a 1000-lumen filament, but we've got our colder/bluer light appearance in a legal bulb.

By now you probably see why filtering for yellow does not significantly reduce light output: Take our 1000-lumen 9006 as broken down by colour output above. No such thing as a filter that adds extra yellow light, so we have to get our yellow by suppressing blue-violet (the particular yellow that yellow headlamp/foglamp bulbs produce, called "selective yellow" and described above, contains all the green found in white light. If we took out green, we'd have a turn signal type of amber-orange light.) OK, then, let's cut blue-violet by 80%. That means we've got our 925 lumens' worth of red-orange-yellow-green, plus 15 lumens' worth of blue-violet (after filtration). Total: 940 lumens. MUCH smaller loss! OK, so we put in a very slightly better filament, say one that produces 1060 lumens, and now we've got 980 lumens' worth of red-orange-yellow-green, plus 16 lumens' worth of blue-violet (after filtration) for a total of 996 lumens, which is for all intents and purposes identical to our original 1000-lumen uncoloured bulb (a parking lamp bulb puts out as few as 30 lumens).

 

[soonenough]

Wow that was a really good explanation; thanks for posting that!

 

[Steakman]

...They are great for off-road lights but I really wish people would stop running them in their head lights...

A much earlier comment. But I heartily disagree.

the issue as noted previously is that HID's in your typical .. shall we say Mitusbishi Lancer with a wing on er... modded by your local 19 -22 yr old that cannot afford or is unknowing about a "proper" HID install. He just buys the HID lights complete with ballasts, ignitors, bulb type , relays and away he goes and installs them into a std headlight assembly. To those that wish to blind this ********...I can certainly empathize with you. BIG time.! it bugs me too. The scatter is hard to take and it is truly blinding.

My truck has HID's as well: 4300K colour, but they are installed in aftermarket Projector headlamps. Those head lamps have a cut-off plate built within the cone shaped shade that limits scatter all the while effectively doubling what you can truly see while driving at night. They are AWESOME.! for Hi-beams I have a set of PIAA's (14 months old) in a 9005 version - they too have been excellent. For the record, I've never been flashed. (oh man that leaves one kinda open to abuse..LOL)

I also run a set of PIAA 510XT driving lights on my bumper with 80W Nokya H3 lamps - so far so good but the bulbs are new only 2 weeks.

I drive plenty (50,000 miles annually), and at night as well....in Deer & Moose country. I wanna see ****** is on the rd ahead of me.

rgds,

stk

 

[cstamm81]

Anyone run Roundeyes on here? I read favorable things about them, and they use H4 bulbs which I have been happy with in my 80 series. I bought a set for my gf's Jeep, they have yet to arrive.
http://www.roundeyes.com/Toyota_Headlamps-Rectangular_Toyota_Conversion_Headlamps.html

 

[DaJudge]

Calling Sylvania Silverstars or PIAA "good bulbs" is tantamount to calling a stock Jeep Compass a "good trail rig for the Rubicon"....

Osram makes the real Silverstar bulbs; they are EDOT and worth the money. Phillips also makes a fine product called Visionplus.

Please read this before buying replacement bulbs:
http://www.danielsternlighting.com/tech/bulbs/blue/good/good.html

Please read this before doing an unsafe/illegal HID "upgrade":
http://www.danielsternlighting.com/tech/bulbs/Hid/HID.html

This will help you too:
http://www.danielsternlighting.com/tech/relays/relays.html

I just bought a pair of Sylvania Silverstars and they do NOT have blue glass. If they did I would have RAN from them. That article you referenced is 5 years old.

The generic crap bulbs I replaced were blue and they were horrible, so the idea holds, blue is crap.

 

[Hilldweller]

I just bought a pair of Sylvania Silverstars and they do NOT have blue glass. If they did I would have RAN from them. That article you referenced is 5 years old.

The generic crap bulbs I replaced were blue and they were horrible, so the idea holds, blue is crap.

I haven't seen any new ones; they must be brand-spanking new.
Or maybe they got rid of the Disney bulbs and are selling the real-deal Osrams in the US with the Silverstar name?

I'll have to check...

Edit:
just checked their website and they still show the Silverstars as blue and the Xtravisions as clear.

Ultra

Xtravision