Best Car headlight bulbs

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skalomax

skalomax

Flashlight Enthusiast
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Hi, I'm saving for an HID kit. In the meantime I wan't get some bright bulbs for my car. The stock ones are yellow and pretty much dim.

Can anyone help me out?

Thanks
 
Sylvania Silverstars are the ones most folks rave about, they're notably brighter than stock bulbs and even kinda-sorta look like HIDs.
 
one more vote for the Silverstars. My only complaint is that they have considerably shorter life than the "regular" bulbs. They didn't last more than a winter in my car. :green:
 
Thanks for all the help guys.
The Sylvanias were the ones I was leaning towards as well.
They just have to last me 2 months or so.

:thumbsup:
 
What Norm said. Rewire your headlights with heavy gauge wire and relays before buying bulbs. A 10% voltage drop causes a 46% drop in light output with halogen bulbs. Getting rid of your voltage drop can make a BIG difference. Aim your headlights properly.

Silverstars are overpriced garbage. The laws of physics simply do not allow a colored filter that removes light to increase brightness. Yes, it's really that simple.

If you have to stick with stock/legal wattage bulbs, then one of the +50% bulbs made by a reputable manufacturer and upgraded wiring + relays is the way to go. +50% refers to 50% more light than stock while still drawing the same wattage as stock, achieved via a different gas mixture and a harder driven filament. Some bulb life is lost. If you don't need to stick with stock wattage then big wires and relays will allow you to run any sane wattage you desire.

The sad truth is that most US spec headlights are garbage and really can't be driven very hard without blinding everyone.

Skalomax-

By "HID kit" I really hope you mean a kit that includes the proper reflector/lens and housing for HIDs. There's no safe, legal, or considerate way to put an HID capsule into headlamp designed for a halogen bulb for any kind of on-road usage.

:buddies:
 
The best route is to swap out sealed beam units for H4 housings and H4 bulbs...

I run IPF Housings and IPF X51 Fatboy bulbs. They absolutely blow away anything even close to their price range. Another buddy runs Silverstars and our side-by-side comparo was a joke.

Sure HIDs are cool. Unfortunately, however, nowhere near practical for road use. Friends of mine run HIDs in their rally car, and there's no chance they could be run on the street. Besides that, the investment (if it's done right) is enough to run most folks the other way.

Perhaps there are some retailers, etc. calling their lights "HID," but if it's the true HID vehicle lighting you're looking for, it's quite a pickle to get into.

Dutch
 
I researched this few weeks back and if you just want replacement bulbs that are brighter the following were the most recommended. They're whiter but still slightly yellow, no horrible blue tint at all.

- Philips X-treme Power (80%+)
- Osram Night Breaker (90%+)

I ended up with the Philips which i'm pretty impressed with. My workmate got the Night Breakers and loves them too. I've used heaps of other brands/models before and these are the best so far.
 
Last edited:
When you say to install heavier wiring and a relay would you be saying specifically to:

Take the wire at the back of the lamp and attach it to a relay and run heavy wire from the battery, through the relay, then to the lamp? I see the advantage here as minimal intrusion into the car's wiring system.

Or is it more complicated than that? Any suggestions on the brand/model relay and gauge of wire?
 
Use a fuse right next to the battery, but other than that, yeah. 10awg wire, and Bosch relays are good, make sure to give the ground path attention too. Stock headlight wiring is often 18awg wire, runs from the battery, into the cab, to the headlight switch, to the dimmer switch, out of the cab, and then finally reaches the headlights. Can easily be 12+ feet of 18awg wire. After rewiring you can have 4 feet of 10awg wire. Much less voltage drop.

http://www.danielsternlighting.com

:buddies:
 
If your car has 9006 low-beams, and you want brighter lights, then just mod a pair of 9005 high-beam bulbs to fit into the 9006 housings. I did that and the light output is VERY noticeable, especially driving at night or in dimly-lit parking lots.

Using HIR (note, HIR, not HID) bulbs in the same type of mod (9005-9006) will give you even brighter light output.


And like Diesel_Bomber mentioned, do not go for Silver Star. The blue bulbs will trick your eyes into thinking the output is higher, but actually is lower (due to the filter).
 
BEpsilon said:
And like Diesel_Bomber mentioned, do not go for Silver Star. The blue bulbs will trick your eyes into thinking the output is higher, but actually is lower (due to the filter).
Click to expand...

I can testify to the validity of this statement, and I ended up swapping the original bulbs back in after I installed Silverstars. That is, until I installed the wiring harness kit and Narva bulbs I got from Daniel Stern.

My Fiancee's Jeep Cherokee barely had headlights... the wiring was so shoddy and the sealed-beams were so underdriven that her fog-lights were brighter than her headlights by a decent margin - FWIW, that's par for the course on Cherokees. Anyway, Mr. Stern hooked us up with replacement reflectors rated for legal use with 65W/70W bulbs, and a Jeep wiring harness. Now she has the brightest headlights in town, literally. I installed it all, and I'm still jealous. And they're not ridiculous and blue like on the brighter import cars, they're actually white and have a good beam pattern. She does a lot of driving in at night, and it makes me more comfortable knowing she can actually see what's ahead of her now.

Plus, unlike with HID bulbs, it doesn't matter if she switches between Hi/Lo beams quickly!
 
I would save the money towards HID purchase.

What kind of car is it for?
 
"HID kits" are illegal for a good reason: They're unsafe and ineffective. As others have pointed out, Sylvania Silver Stars and all the other so-called "extra white" bulbs with blue or purple colored glass are a giant fraud. They're not brighter at all, they're actually dimmer. The best-performing bulbs have colorless clear glass — full stop. There's all kinds of BS marketing nonsense about color temperature, kelvin rating, "whiteness" etc. all designed to distract from the simple fact that what you need to see well is lumens. Go tell Stern what kind of car you're working on and see what he recommends.
 
I put Silverstar Ultras in my wife's car about 1.5 - 2 years ago, and they're still working fine. Both, my wife and myself agreed that they really made a positive difference. They are brighter and they are whiter!
 
I looked at Silverstars package and noticed they now tell you how they come up with their bulbs being brighter.

They say the measure the output at 100% while the regular bulbs are being run at 80%. Or something close to that effect *been a month since I last looked*
 
Thanks for the help guys.

I'm waiting patiently for some good bulbs, although hids shall be coming soon. :D

(for a '07 toyota camry)
 
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