Your favorite non-OEM halogen headlight bulb?

PIAA are way over priced and never perform that well according to recognized performance tests from the likes of http://autoexpress.co.uk


Stick with recognized major lighting mfrs and you won't be sorry. Philips and Osram/Sylvania are some of the best products out there .
 
The bluer the light, the more glare and reflection you get in bad weather, rain, fog. Best lights for rainy and foggy days are the yellower ones, not the blue ones. You can see the road much better with the yellow lights when it's wet.

However, the slight blue ones seem to work well on dry days as high beams, they really light up road reflectors and signs.

On my Subie Outback, I have 9005 Silverstar Ultras as high beams, H-1 Xtra-Vision as low beams, and I'd like to get some gold or yellow 9006s for the fog lights. Where should I look for those?
 
Philips high output, Sylvania Xtra-vision, clear glass is always best. Consistant good quality bulbs at a reasonable price.

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I vote for PIAA's too. they last a fairly long time and have excellent light output
 
One of the low-beam Silverstars went out on my wife's 98 Monte Carlo. I put one of the standard halogens I had removed back in. Compared to the Silverstar, it looked like the plain headlight was still off from the driver's seat. Meanwhile I ordered two of the HIR lamps to replace them both. Wow! The low beam HIR's put out as much volume of light as the Silverstar high beams. The distance is less due to the low beam cut off point, but there is a much broader fill from side to side. The color of the light is yellowish much like the color of a standard halogen. The wife says no one has "flashed" her thinking her high beams were on, so glare to oncoming vehicles must not be very offensive. I'm tempted to replace the high beams now!
 
Does anyone know of a high powered HB5/9007 GEL bulb if they do one even??

I run Nighthawks right now but they don't last too long.
 
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i've been very happy with Philips Automotive Lighting. they have stuff available in the euro market that is not here in the US. they have a tri-color bulb that shines light into 3 key areas of the road (straight, down to the side, and upper for signs). the bulb has 2 color filters on it (blue and yellow) which makes it a tri-color bulb.

i've used the All-Weather bulbs for fog lamps, and i use the BlueVision for headlamps. excellent bulbs all around.
 
I found a H3 bulb locally for $6 that has an output of 100watts. So much for HID now. I plan to use these in off road lighting as I pick them up also. It's made by Hella but I wondered what part of China at that price. It's ot made in China. This place has it all. I have their LED stop/tail light bulbs and they are great.
 
Just a note that the HIR bulbs are not being produced by toshiba anymore so they will be hard to fine. The philips xtreme vision is a great bright bulb with no gimmick blue tint to it....
 
Originally Posted By: rszappa1
Just a note that the HIR bulbs are not being produced by toshiba anymore so they will be hard to fine. The philips xtreme vision is a great bright bulb with no gimmick blue tint to it....


Anyone going to pickup the design of the HIR bulbs or should I buy them now while I can?
 
look at this site.

http://www.rallylights.com/

I run the 9003 65w/75w bulbs in my 240sx. Shhh, don't tell the fuzz. lol

The 55w performing like 85w bulb [censored] is just that. They mean as white as but not as bright as. The above site will give wattage, color temp and lumens (the only thing that matters)

Daniel stern mentioned above is very knowledgeable and will answer emails. Atleast in my case.

I also have 85w H3 yellows in my fogs. 300 watts of light at night and I never get "flashed" because they are properly aimed.
 
Did you ever try re-aiming your lights when you changed to hid's. In dual filliment bulbs the high beam is up and left as opposed to low beam down and right. So if you throw a brighter bulb (hid) in you would need to re-aim i would seem. I know when i tried higher wattage bulbs i needed to re-aim. It's funny though alot of places will fail an inspection for blue bulbs, but [censored] would freeze over before they would check aim like there supposed to. That being said i really liked my euro osram vision plus +50's
 
I'm not sure if you were talking to me purelux, but I'm not running HID's. Just slightly higher wattage.

I couldn't reaim if I wanted to. all 4 adjusters are broken, Gotta love cheap plastic. I'm not about to pay $300 per side for new assemblies.

+50s are great, I think that the 65 watt bulbs only come in 9003 but other bulbs have different tricks. Like (and I'm trying to go by memory here) there is an IR bulb for one of the #'s, also for chevy's you can substitute one # for another by a touch of ginding on the base (h8 i think). Look at daniel stern and rallylights above, that is where I got my info. rallylight also give lumen rating on their bulbs. COOL!!

in AZ they only inspect the emitions. Nothing else. Good thing too because many of the new cars (bmw's and mercedes) with HID actualy have an illegal K temp on the bulbs. I think federal DOT only allows like 4500 or something. Those purple and hyper blues are 5000 to 7000K. Maybe it has changed due to the pure # of cars on the road.
 
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