What I found on the shelf today in a major auto parts store

sadtimes

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In need of a bulb for my stop lamp I first went to Advanced Auto Parts, I found that they only sell Sylvania bulbs, so I didn't purchase anything, but what I did find was 3 or 4 Sylvania LED bulbs, the back of the package was labeled "for interior and license plate use only"... Refusing to give my money to Sylvania I then went to Auto Zone, I could not prepare myself for what I found...

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While I was standing there in shock staring at the shelf an employee came up and asked if I needed help, I asked her if the Pilot LED bulbs were legal, "Ive been told they are not" was her reply. So I then ask why they are for sale, she had no response. I left her with some information to forward to her store manager, but I doubt it will do any good. We are losing this battle... Needless to say I left there and went to a local shop and purchased a single Wagener bulb for 2 dollars, the employee told me that they are switching to Sylvania as well and will no longer carry other brands.

Why does no one carry Phillips, Osram, etc? And why is NHTSA allowing these major companies to stock the shelves with these LED bulbs (Im mainly referring to the Pilot with this question) and how is Sylvania getting away with selling lights for "interior or license plate use only" if they will fit in other places of vehicle...
 

-Virgil-

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Philips' introduction last year must have really lit a fire under Sylvania's butt. There is apparently zero zip, zilch, nada information on these on Sylvania's own sites (and other stuff missing from Sylvania's site, too...do the images fail to load on this page for everyone, or jsut for me?), but when I called Autozone and asked if they had Sylvania Zevo 3157C, 4114C, and 3157R in stock, they said yes. For all those nonexistent "interior" applications of those bulb types, I'm sure! I imagine there will be a big official roll-out of these bulbs at the SEMA show in Las Vegas that's either the end of this month or sometime next month.

All that said: illegal lights and bulbs right on the shelf at an auto parts store? Nothing new. Been seeing it for years. Some states and municipalities have toothy laws against the sale of equipment which, when installed, renders a vehicle noncompliant with applicable safety standards. More enforcement would be nice. NHTSA seems to be taking a "hands off" or "look the other way" approach with these kinds of bulbs.

I will probably pick up a few of these Sylvania bulbs, just as I did with the Philips ones, to put them through their paces and see how well they do (or don't) work. I can't say I'm very optimistic, given the physical design of these bulbs. It doesn't look like they would direct enough light backward, toward the lamp reflector. But we'll see! It will probably be a while, because the nearest Autozone is way out of my way, and they seem to have an exclusive on the sale of these bulbs for now.
 

sadtimes

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(and other stuff missing from Sylvania's site, too...do the images fail to load on this page for everyone, or jsut for me?)

They don't load for me either..

All that said: illegal lights and bulbs right on the shelf at an auto parts store? Nothing new.

I stopped and ticketed a driver who showed me a receipt for LED bulbs from AutoZone, But I never thought they were actually selling them! I was under the impression that he had substituted his receipt from another bulb so that he could have something to show if/when he was stopped.. I have never seen the HID kits for sale in the chain stores, and never seen LED bulbs that would fit in safety equipment, which is why I was so shocked to see these illegal lights in this quantity.

More enforcement would be nice.

I can only write so many tickets, and seeing these for sale in this quantity in a bricks and mortar store really was a similar feeling to when you dog dies, it was very depressing.

I plan to visit the AutoZone in my jurisdiction, Im going to confiscate the lights and charge the manager with selling them, which I feel sure will get AutoZone corporates attention.


You didn't even mention the lights in the first picture...
 
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-Virgil-

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I was lumping those in with "illegal lights at an auto parts store". Any color you want! Yuck.
 

-Virgil-

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There are a whole lot of bulbs in those two photos that fit only in vehicle exterior (safety/regulated) lights and that ruin the safety performance of the lamp they're installed in.
 

-Virgil-

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wcowan, dumping the entire page's text into a post was not called for; please don't do it again. The question was not whether the page loads, the question was whether the images (photos) on the page load.
 
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Marcturus

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The question was not whether the page loads, the question was whether the images (photos) on the page load.
Seems like some of their ssl certificates have expired. Try loading the page with http://... instead of loading it with https. Works here.
 

Alaric Darconville

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They load for me, too.

It'd make things a little easier if there weren't overlapping interior/exterior functions for certain bulbs, so that no dome light / courtesy light bulb could ever also be a side maker lamp, license plate lamp, or CHMSL bulb. (It was advantageous for me to find 194NA bulbs for my Corolla's map lights-- I now have a 194NA in the driver's side map light to reduce the hit to my night vision if I use it. I still need to do the passenger side and maybe try to find a DE3175NA if such an animal exists)
 
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-Virgil-

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Seems like some of their ssl certificates have expired. Try loading the page with http://... instead of loading it with https. Works here.

Yup, now I see the images...looks like still no pic of their "Zevo" 7-inch LED headlamp, though, which is in fact a rebranded Peterson 701C.
 

-Virgil-

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This press release I just found tells a pretty clear story about where Sylvania's focus is. What it doesn't tell is what exactly our Federal regulators are getting paid to do.
 

Marcturus

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Let me guess ... it couldn't be: privately meet with some lawyers, show them what could be earned from cases like the recent Sylvania halogen settlement, and modestly ask for a thank-you note?
 

N8N

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This isn't new, remember 10 years ago or so when "Altezza" taillights were sitting right there on the shelves for many popular cars/SUVs? Just because something isn't legal doesn't mean there isn't a demand for it. Unfortunately, many stores would be happier to go ahead and provide it anyway (sometimes but not always with a little "for off road use only" disclaimer) than try to educate their customers as to why they shouldn't purchase a product.
 

TEEJ

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This isn't new, remember 10 years ago or so when "Altezza" taillights were sitting right there on the shelves for many popular cars/SUVs? Just because something isn't legal doesn't mean there isn't a demand for it. Unfortunately, many stores would be happier to go ahead and provide it anyway (sometimes but not always with a little "for off road use only" disclaimer) than try to educate their customers as to why they shouldn't purchase a product.

The only time they are motivated to DISCOURAGE a sale is if it then prompted another sale instead, etc.

IE: No incentive at this point to tell a customer, in essence, that what they want, they will have to walk out and buy a a competitor's shop.

They just say "For show/entertainment or off road use only" or some other disclaimer...which is generally ignored of course.

Most of the customers buy stuff like that because they saw it somewhere, thought it looked cool, and wanted it for their car too, etc.

Tell him its illegal, immoral and fattening, etc, and he KNOWS others who have it, so, when you're done wasting air, he just goes and buys what he wanted from someone else.

They don't really care, and, its hard to make them care....the issues are not on their radar.
 

Illum

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Tell him its illegal, immoral and fattening, etc,

:crackup:
Anything to prove the point eh?

On a serious note, there are several people out there that understands the legality behind the modifications but only on a partial level. That is, they appear to focus on headlights in general, as opposed to taking into consideration the library of other lamps on a vehicles exterior. While I normally would save my breath to convince those who had made up their mind, I wouldn't exactly say its wasting air. Perhaps the insight alone could contribute to a change in buying behavior.

Sometimes all one needs to hear is "it's illegal."
 

QualityAir

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I plan to visit the AutoZone in my jurisdiction, Im going to confiscate the lights and charge the manager with selling them, which I feel sure will get AutoZone corporates attention.

Please let us know how this works out for you.
 
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-Virgil-

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I swung by Autozone on my way to a lumber yard today, and picked up some of these bulbs. I've just spent a bit of time with them, and here are my observations:

They are made in Germany, which is a bit of a shock, I was expecting China.

Next surprise: the "R" bulbs (3157R, 4157R on the package) have "3000K" and "For RED lenses only" on the package, so I expected they would light up red and the "3000K" thing would be just another bogus number. No, they light up warm white. 3000K is probably about accurate. It contains enough red to make red-lens lights, and the amber ones I tried, light up about the same apparent color as with an incandescent bulb. The "C" bulbs (3157C, 4157C, 4114C) have "For CLEAR lenses only" and "6000K" on the package. The 6000K is probably about accurate. It makes white lamps light up cold white, and amber lamps light up more yellow than amber.

The marketing of 3157 (R and C), 4157 (R and C), and 4114 (C) is, as I suspected, sort of a sham. The 3157R and 4157R packages both contain the same bulb, marked "3557WW". The 3157C, 4157C, and 4114C all contain "3557CW". "WW" is what Osram uses for their Warm White car bulbs, and CW is for Cool White. There is no such standardized bulb type as "3557". There is 3057, 3157, 3357, 3457, and 3757, but no 3557, so this is just Osram's number for it. Same with the bayonet metal base versions, which are stamped "7556CW" or "7556WW" and are sold as "1156R", "1156C", "7506R", and "7506C".

These don't really attempt to directly light up the reflector like the Philips product does. The Sylvania product depends on the very brightly lit diffuser dome to distribute the light in a spread-out patch rather than a single spot. The extreme diffusion of the dome does cause the reflector to light up more than I would have expected, but it's clear the idea behind these bulbs is for the optics of the lamp to be disregarded and "shotgunned" through. In some lamps I tried these in, the output appeared probably adequate, and even the EPLLA (lit-up lens area) appeared OK; these did not produce a "bright spot on completely dark background" effect.

Now on to the big, deal-breaker fault: there is almost no difference between the dim and bright modes of these bulbs. There is only a very, very slight, barely-perceptible drop in intensity when going from the bright mode to the dim mode (brake to tail, or turn to front position, or DRL to front position). Get that: there is essentially no difference between the brake mode and the tail mode. This is extremely dangerous.

Legality? No way. These bulbs are not safe to use in brake/tail lights or park/turn lights or any other two-function dim/bright lights. The guy at Autozone, when I raised the topic, said "Oh, yeah, they're legal. I mean, they're not legal legal, but see, they say "OFF ROAD USE ONLY", so that makes it legal for us to sell them. Heheheh." That's completely wrong, but how many people know that? How many people are even going to ask? As for the bulb packaging itself, it speaks with a forked tongue. The front says "OFF ROAD USE ONLY"...and it also says "FOR RED LENSES ONLY". The back goes on at some length about compatibility with bulb outage indicators and mentions interior usage. For all those red lenses with bulb outage indicators on the interiors of off-road vehicles, right? Yeah, right.

These are going to cause crashes. Anyone installing these in a vehicle's exterior lights is going to immediately ruin the car's compliance with Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. I guess US Federal regulators have been see/hear/speaking no evil for so long that big, major-name companies feel comfortable joining the fly-by-night operations in selling blatantly illegal car lights.

Godspeed, drmalenko.
 
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