Headlight bullbs for Honda 2013 CRV

We just got a CRV for my wife. It replaces a 23 year old Accord. I have been trying to get her to go to a newer vehicle for years. But that Accord has been quite trouble free and she loves it. But it just is not anywhere as safe as current production. Seatbelts are it. So finally she has gone for it. But lighting for us old people becomes more and more important. I have HID in mine.

I replaced the bulbs on the Accord a long time ago with the Infrared reflecting bulbs; available if you looked hard. She credits them with saving her life. The CRV has 9003/H4 bulbs. Not exciting and I want to maximize her (our) survival chances. I have spent the day researching bulbs. I thought I had it resolved until I went to the Phillips web site. They do not appear to still make the extreme power bulbs. And there are others I have not seen anything on. I could not find any actual technical information on any of their auto bulbs. I just kept going around in circles which all ended in low grade consumer pap. I am guessing that is my fault. But that site sure does not try to help.

What I want is the best bulb for my wife's car.

There was an extreme vision product, but I did not find even that.

Can someone please tell me what are actual current products and the best choice out of those. I am a great believer in the approach of reflecting the IR output back into the filament. It seems the most reasonable way to increase brightness without raising power demand. It is essentially free light. I want white light with an optimal pattern.

There are no HIR (halogen-infrared) H4s. The Xtreme Vision is the replacement for the Xtreme Power. They definitely are still made in 9003 and in H4, and are widely available. Google 9003XVS2 and you'll find plenty of vendors; shop by price. That is the best spec-wattage (60/55w) bulb you can put in. The wiring on the present-model CR-V is pretty stout and has no trouble with the Osram 70/65w bulb (available from Stern or Candlepower or probably some other vendors, too), which puts out more light than any 60/55w bulb without creating heat/power/glare problems. There are some interesting comparisons here; too bad no light meter readings, but click the first four pictures to read the electrical data and keep in mind photographs are all but useless for evaluating beam performance. In this comparative presentation they give a modicum of useful information. Whatever you do, don't buy bulbs that have blue/purple glass and claim to produce "whiter" light, don't buy off-brand bulbs, and don't fall for the dangerous "HID kit" scam. If improved bulbs don't bring the headlamps' performance up to where you want them, there are (legitimate) HID projector headlamps offered by Honda as a production option in other markets such as Europe. Would be difficult and expensive to get a hold of them, but that would be the only worthwhile upgrade path; none of the aftermarket headlights are any good, they're all junk, and so-called "retrofits" involving cutting and grafting a projector into an original reflector headlamp are also a no-no.

I am reasonably sure that I saw a post that indicated that at least some of the high end Phillips bulbs used the HIR technology. I believe the information applied at least to the Xtreme Power bulbs. Whatever the designation 9003/H4/HB2. I would appreciate some more feedback on this question. It is a very rational technology.

Even the Extreme Vision lacked any useful specifications on the Phillips site.

A potentially interesting product that may be relevant to my problem.

http://www.ebay.cоm/itm/H4-9003-HIG...800Lumen-25W-Cree-Ships-from-US-/251323096760

Anyone have any experience with this or similar products?

Just keep the bulbs you have and install a relay harness. Susquehanna Motorsports makes them or sells relays, sockets, etc.

Sent from my XT897 using Tapatalk 4

alternety said:

A potentially interesting product that may be relevant to my problem.

http://www.ebay.cоm/itm/H4-9003-HIG...800Lumen-25W-Cree-Ships-from-US-/251323096760

Anyone have any experience with this or similar products?

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Although Cree is a company local to us and I'd love for you to buy a product from them, I plead with you to stick to their indoor lighting LED products. I'd even go so far as to say that I'm disappointed that they offer such an LED retrofit kit, if that is a genuine Cree product (it may be a fake). Stick with halogen bulbs in your CR-V. I have a 2008 CR-V and the Philips Xtreme Power are working well, and offer a significant improvement over the standard bulbs. When these go out, I will replace them with either the newer Xtreme Vision or with GE Nighthawk Platinum.

alternety said:

A potentially interesting product that may be relevant to my problem.
URL removed
Anyone have any experience with this or similar products?

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One doesn't need experience with it (or similar products) to know that a) it's unsafe and ineffective, and b) it's illegal. The way that particular "bulb" is designed, it'll produce terrible beam pattern, because the disc-shaped emitter doesn't even come close to approximating the point-source light produced by a filament. It's a no-go at this station.

No, go with your first instinct and upgrade the bulbs. A relay harness installation is difficult and not cost-effective on a 2013 CR-V, and anything advertised as an "LED bulb" to replace a filament bulb on a car is a dangerous, illegal, utter scam. The one you've linked is even scummier than that -- this is certainly not an authorized use of the Cree name or trademark. Take a look at this page. Looks familiar? Now look at the supplier information on that page. Sounds anything like "Cree"...? Nope. Avoid this junk.

Scheinwerfermann said:

The one you've linked is even scummier than that -- this is certainly not an authorized use of the Cree name or trademark...

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Thanks for confirming what I felt to be true: there is a Cree-like logo, with Cree-like lettering, but it smelled too fishy to be something from a reputable and high-standing company like Cree.

Scheinwerfermann said:

A relay harness installation is difficult and not cost-effective on a 2013 CR-V.

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Off-topic, but do you feel that the same is true of the previous generation CR-V? I drive a 2008, which is why I am wondering.

Scheinwerfermann said:

No, go with your first instinct and upgrade the bulbs. A relay harness installation is difficult and not cost-effective on a 2013 CR-V

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Curious why you would say that... difficult, I believe, if the vehicle has any electronics monitoring the bulbs for function, use headlights for DRLs, or other gimmickry... but I've yet to see a vehicle using halogen lights that couldn't benefit from a relay harness.

N8N said:

Curious why you would say that... difficult, I believe, if the vehicle has any electronics monitoring the bulbs for function, use headlights for DRLs, or other gimmickry... but I've yet to see a vehicle using halogen lights that couldn't benefit from a relay harness.

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Scheinwerfermann said:

The wiring on the present-model CR-V is pretty stout and has no trouble with the Osram 70/65w bulb (available from Stern or Candlepower or probably some other vendors, too), which puts out more light than any 60/55w bulb without creating heat/power/glare problems.

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Scheinwerfermann said:

A relay harness installation is difficult and not cost-effective on a 2013 CR-V

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If the wiring is "stout" and "has no trouble" with the 70/65W bulb, I'm not sure you can improve it much over stock wiring. There's that whole "diminishing returns" thing. The materials, the labor, the potential for relay failure, and all that. If the wiring were pretty wimpy, then a relay harness would be a good idea-- and I'm sure Scheinwerfermann would have said so and made such a recommendation.

Remember also that as you raise the voltage, you shorten the life considerably more than you improve the output. All the effort to eke out just a tiny bit more performance (by upgrading the wiring) will be counterproductive. You definitely want more than 13.2V, but still less than 14.0V.

Thanks everyone. I do understand the issues with optics and point source vs linear source vs area source. I just looked at the ad and thought Cree (as it most likely is not) had engineered a solution. I wonder if one could make a satisfactory replacement if you were to use several strips of LEDs and couple them to light guides. Then bring the light guides together to form the emitter. You might be able to get close to a point source. For a filament replacement, if you could get the LEDs above and below the desired emitting area you could put the emitting light pipes in a filament like configuration. For filament emulation if it is possible to feed the light pipes into a single piece of glass that emitted in all directions it might work. But I have no idea if suitable materials are available. I have never seen an OEM LED headlight, but it would be interesting to keep the light engine outside of the headlight and use a light pipe to put the energy where they want it. makes replacement easy (although the LEDs might outlast the car). By using a light pipe it would be relatively easy to provide dynamic beam shaping. With the proper optics you could move the source a little bit to point the beams and control their shape. Possibly less expensively than mechanically moving the headlight assembly.

But physics moves on and nano technology can engineer some very strange things. But of course, for new lights it would continue to be much simpler to just do it like they do now because they can control the optics.

Back to my problem. I agree I don't want to rewire the car. For one thing, my wife would kill me if she saw me heading toward her brand new car with tools and parts.

So, bulbs. Do you all agree that an Extreme Vision would be the best choice?

Just a short thought on rewiring. The possibility of providing excessive voltage and lowering bulb life is one of my concerns.

Has anyone tried this. Run heavy wires if needed, but use an electronic controller to turn them on an off. Should be more reliable than relays.

The controller would be designed to provide a tightly regulated voltage to the lights. This would keep the bulbs at an optimum voltage when the car's electrical system swings around. An auto power bus is a remarkable dirty thing. Things keep going on and off and they dump power into the buss as they do. There can be some serious voltage spikes. That is a significant issue to the guys that make the equipment as well as the silicon sculpturers. Controlling the voltage spikes may well extend the bulb life. A 40V spike every now and then can't be good for them.

The voltage differential between power bus and desired bulb voltage may complicate the controller design a bit. It may need a DC-DC converter to boost the voltage a little bit so the control device can operate without lowering the output voltage too much. But that is essentially a simple and common switching power supply with off the shelf components and designs. It will cost money and use a bit of energy. But it might be worth it. And it could be designed to let you pick performance or lifetime. If manufacturers would make some lower voltage bulbs (a volt or so) you could go with a fairly simple regulator without needing a DC-DC conversion.

i would think twice about messing with wires, your service center may not like it. you may have warranty issues

alternety said:

So, bulbs. Do you all agree that an Extreme Vision would be the best choice?

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The best choice for a standard-wattage bulb (which I'm all for using the standard wattage). Because Scheinwerfermann says your wiring can take it, and that in this case the Osram 70/65w bulb will be just fine, the choice is up to you.

alternety said:

Has anyone tried this. Run heavy wires if needed, but use an electronic controller to turn them on an off. Should be more reliable than relays.

The controller would be designed to provide a tightly regulated voltage to the lights. This would keep the bulbs at an optimum voltage when the car's electrical system swings around. An auto power bus is a remarkable dirty thing. Things keep going on and off and they dump power into the buss as they do. There can be some serious voltage spikes. That is a significant issue to the guys that make the equipment as well as the silicon sculpturers. Controlling the voltage spikes may well extend the bulb life. A 40V spike every now and then can't be good for them.

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There is a manufacturer of a "ballast" for headlamp bulbs, this particular ballast is not but a toy one should avoid.

If manufacturers would make some lower voltage bulbs (a volt or so) you could go with a fairly simple regulator without needing a DC-DC conversion.

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Lower voltage means more current. Whether going from 13.2 to 12.2V, or from 13.2 to nominal 6V, the lower voltage bulb needs more current to produce a similar amount of light (generally speaking).

N8N said:

Curious why you would say that.

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Because the wiring on a present-model Honda is a great deal better than the wiring on the '80s-'90s VWs you've mentioned in previous posts, and because many of today's vehicles have headlamp circuits much more complicated than you seem to have in mind. Multiplexing, PWM, CAN bus, outage monitoring and circuit shutoff in the event of a detected outage (such as can be triggered by the system seeing a relay coil rather than a filament) and, yes, the DRL operation you mention are some examples.

I've yet to see a vehicle using halogen lights that couldn't benefit from a relay harness.

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How many vehicles' headlamp circuits have you scrutinized to arrive firmly at this conclusion? That's sort of a rhetorical question meant to raise the possibility that the answer is "not enough". Moreover, what do we mean by "benefit"? Yes, if there's excessive voltage drop in the circuit, light output can be materially increased with a relay harness -- filament lamp output rises exponentially as voltage input rises, and falls exponentially as voltage input falls. The exponent is 3.4. However, filament lamp output falls exponentially as voltage input rises, and rises exponentially as voltage input falls. The exponent is -13 (negative thirteen). So if you start out with line voltage of 14.4 volts, and with the standard wiring the bulbs get 13.2 volts (either because of voltage drop or because the vehicle's BCM carefully feeds 13.2v to the bulbs very deliberately), and you install a relay harness so the bulbs get 14.2 volts, then light output will be 28% higher. That would be 1280 lumens instead of 1000 lumens from a standard H4 right smack on the nominal spec. Sounds like a benefit. But bulb lifespan will also drop by 61%, so that standard H4 will have a low beam life expectancy of 155 hours (B3) instead of 400 hours, and 348 hours (Tc) instead of 900 hours. A high-output bulb such as an Xtreme Vision or 70/65w, with its already-shorter lifespan, will have an impractically short lifespan. That adds up in bulb purchase and replacement costs.

alternety said:

use an electronic controller to turn them on an off. Should be more reliable than relays.

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Properly specified, chosen, and installed relays do not present a reliability issue.

The controller would be designed to provide a tightly regulated voltage to the lights.

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Such a headlamp controller was available about ten years ago. It was designed to provide a steady 12.8v to the bulbs despite swings in the vehicle's line voltage. It was also designed to provide a soft-start feature rather than throwing full voltage to the filaments all at once. This device was very effective at prolonging bulb life. The choice of 12.8v was made in accordance with the US regulation test voltage, though that is less realistic than the international UN ("European") test voltage of 13.2. The product was marketed towards fleets and commercial vehicle owner-operators, but it just didn't sell. Seems the math didn't work; many headlight bulbs could be bought and installed for the cost of buying and installing the control module, even before factoring in an extra margin for in case the module were to fail.

But this function as you describe (carefully regulated headlight voltage) is in fact becoming rather widespread in ordinary production vehicles; it helps stave off warranty claims and the resultant costs, and helps quell outrage at the very high cost of bulb replacement on many of today's cars (packaging constraints and other factors create "See your dealer" situations where seemingly the whole front end of the car has to be disassembled to reach the headlight bulb).

If manufacturers would make some lower voltage bulbs (a volt or so) you could go with a fairly simple regulator without needing a DC-DC conversion.

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No good -- such a bulb would not comply with the applicable regulations, because a bulb meeting the output requirements at 11 volts instead of at 12.8v would exceed the allowable output at 12.8v.

The Eco-Vision (Philips) Eco-Bright (Osram/Sylvania) headlight bulbs produce the regulation output at lower current, which is pitched as a fuel/CO2 savings. It can also yield a performance improvement in vehicles with significant voltage drop in the headlight circuit.

Alaric Darconville said:

Lower voltage means more current.

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Actually, the current drawn by a given filament lamp is exponential to the power 1.6 with voltage.

Operate a 12.8v, 57-watt bulb at 12.8v: Current is 4.453 amps.
Operate the same bulb at 11.9v: Current is 3.963 amps (and output is 78% of what it was at 12.8v)

the lower voltage bulb needs more current to produce a similar amount of light (generally speaking).

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"to produce a similar amount of light" changes the question and the answer. It is interesting to look at the UN R37 specifications for bulbs in various voltages. Take H1 for example:

Nominal: 6v, 55w
Actual/test: 6.3v, maximum 63w
Flux: 1350 lumens ± 15%

Nominal: 12v, 55w
Actual/test: 13.2v, maximum 68w
Flux: 1550 lumens ± 15%

Nominal: 24v, 70w
Actual/test: 28.0v, maximum 84w
Flux: 1900 lumens ± 15%

alternety said:

I wonder if one could make a satisfactory replacement if you were to use several strips of LEDs and couple them to light guides.

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No. Efficiency would be very poor. Losses in light guides are far too high for this to be a winning proposition even if the optics could be made to work, which they can't.

So, bulbs. Do you all agree that an Extreme Vision would be the best choice?

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No, I think the best choice would be the Osram 70/65w bulb. The best standard-wattage choice would be the Philips Xtreme Vision.