Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Auto headlight question

$30, and returnable

I just went outside, swapped out one of the bulbs for the stock bulb and looked.
The white 'looks' brighter but the wall colour likely has alot to do with that perception. It is an off bauge drywall so the stock bulb with the yellow hue doesn't show as bright as the white-blue hue bulb.

A friend suggested trying some GE Nighthawk bulbs. He's gone through a few iterations in getting better lights for his old mazda mx6 including adding fog lights. He really feels the Nighthawks added significant candlepower.

Found a good discussion on Nighthawks and those Silverstar bulbs.

I think i'll just go with the Nighthawks and leave it at that.

Aiming is the key. However, on a taller vehicle, its tough not to be in their face if you get close to them. I get angry flashes all the time when I'm in low beams and I'm not using HID bulbs and I check them regularly for aim.. I use basic Halogen Sealed beams cause I like to keep water away from my bulbs if I'm on a flooded logging road or something. (No I don't cross streams, I'm a fly fisher too.)

However, my fog lights have replaced with some mega bright off-road lights so if those people mistaken with my low beams try to blind me instead of a polite flash, they soon learn not to do it again.

The lights on my MX3 were not very good, partly because of bulb choice. For some reason, Mazda used the 9004 bulb which is a 45 watt low beam/65 watt high beam combination. The lower light output was compounded by the cloudy lenses on the headlight, making them even worse.

The first thing I did was to clean the lenses using a plastic polish which made a big difference. Next, I tried some new bulbs. The first pair I bought had one Philips XV (eXtra Vision) and a Philips LL (Long Life). About a year later, I bought a pair of Silverstars and it didn't take long before I realized it was not a good decision. I had the Philips XV and a Silverstar installed at the same time and found that the XV bulb was actually brighter, even though it was a year old. I was a bit surprised but really shouldn't have been. The coating on the Silverstars filters out a lot of the light to change its appearance.

I also added a set of fog lights with H1 bulbs. They had a low cut off so I could use them all the time. They were significantly brighter than the headlights on the MX3, low or high beam.

Since then, I ended up with a new car, a 2001 Saturn SL1. The lights are better than the MX3 since the reflectors are designed better and they use a 4 bulb system, the 9006 55 watt bulb for low beam and the 9005 65 watt for high beam. I replaced the stock low beams with some GE Nighthawks recently and they are noticeably brighter than the previous ones. To do a better comparison, I should have left one of the old bulbs in for a while.

Chess,

You can buy retro fit HID kits. I have them on my Sierra Denali. We have a problem with large critters on the roads in Alaska (moose). They mind their own business and stay off the roads till the snow gets deep, then they decide to take their wandering to the highways. So….we all put driving lights on our rigs to see the damn things before it’s too late. The HID kits are a very nice way to get “almost” as good as a set of off road driving lights but without the big bug eye looking things mounted on a bumper. They are not cheap though…. About $500 for a set and if you want them for both high and low beam, well that’s a grand.

When looking at replacement lights, you don’t want blue or yellow. You want white.

I don’t recall where I bought them, but it was online. Just Google it. Here’s one source….. http://hidsources.com/

Did you get a kit that was a bulb replacements only? Or did you replace the headlight as well?

My understanding is that putting an HID bulb into a headlight housing designed for halogens generally does not work well. The light source for each type of bulb has a different shape and location, resulting in a lot of "wasted" light.

bulb and ballist kit. It works great. I supose some lights are behond help....