Best headlight bulb for life??

[Kinger]

Hey guys,

I had a set of Hiper Industries high's and low's and the low's allready burned out after 5 months. Can anyone tell me the longest they have had thier bulbs and what they are..piaa, solaris, etc. I want another set but don't want to replace them in 5 months. Thanks guys/gals!!

[katnyp]

I have 28 months on my original lamps, still going stong (probably just jynxed it)...I'm a lot of help i/expressions/wink.gif

[Gunmetal]

Solaris highs and lows since June 1999. Still going "strong" even though they're hiper white and therefore useless at night

[Kinger]

Thanks katnyp...

Gunmetal..What do you mean hiper white is usless at night?? I loved the difference in my hiper bulbs at night. thanks for the response!

[Adidas02]

Same here. I have Hiper Industries Highs and Lows, and I can see WAY better at night with them.

[Blackcoog]

I have the superwhite platinum PIAA's and they are great I can see way better in the dark.

[Gunmetal]

I basically can't see sh*t at night with the hiperwhites. All hiperwhites are a goddamn rip-off designed to take advantage of people wanting to make their cars look like upmarket luxury vehicles, and I (and thousands other) fell for it. The hiperwhites will illuminate stuff RIGHT infront of you very well, but their range falls off dramatically after that. Why do you think that Luxury vehicles like Lexus' and Mercedes have HID lowbeams, but use bright yellow "standard" bulbs for the foglights? If hiper-white did anything useful at night, they'd be standard equipment, you'd think.

If you think you can actually see better in the dark, I challenge you to swap in a stock bulb to one of the housings, and go out into the country where there are no street lamps. You'll notice how much farther you can see with the stock bulb than the hiper white. Whenever I go to visit my gf in the country, I stricly use my highbeams or I can't see sh*t. The highbeams are hiperwhite as well, and the only reason they're useful is because they're rated at about 50 watts over the stock ones.

Overboost did a test (http://www.overboost.com/story.asp?id=102) on "hiperwhites" and found they're 50% LESS effective than stock bulbs! They're utter, utter garbage! (Conversely, the HID kit they tested in a later article provided 240% MORE light coverage than stock)

[MercMobile]

I have SuperWhites in mine, and they are MUCH brighter than the original.. I would say at least 33% brighter. They are also gauranteed for life.

[Gunmetal]

I'm not saying they're not BRIGHTER. I'm saying that the light coverage (how far you can actually SEE) is much lower with hiperwhites. Who cares if two feet in front of your car looks like daylight if three feet in front looks like the bottom of a tar pit?

This isn't a flaw in a particular manufacturer's bulb. This is endemic in the fact that "hiper" white light won't go as far as yellower light

I'm not making this up! Check out the link above, as well as this link (http://lighting.mbz.org/faq/) for more info

[markc]

I totally agree with Gunmetal. I have the Solaris high/lows and although they are brighter and whiter than the stock yellowish light, the visibility in the distance sucks. You could say that's just the brand but it has been well researched that even PIAA bulbs are just as bad in this area. There has been a couple of times back in the country where I would have to slow down to a crawl out of fear dropping off into the abyss. Only good thing is they have lasted for 2 years. HID would be great but I am not so sure our headlight design would produce a satisfactory beam pattern to justify the expense.

I haven't had any luck with any type of fog lights though (PIAA,Solaris,Stock) No matter what brand I use the filament breaks after a month or two. I can only assume it's the cheap design of the housing that allows it to flop up and down loosely in the bumper that causes this.

[Pmcc225]

I have Solaris bulbs and really like them. I agree about the distance though, so I just aimed my headlights up a fraction and made sure they were even. This seemed to help out a lot w/ distance and didn't really hurt the close-up coverage.

[Kinger]

Thanks for the replies guys and gals, I too read that article on overboost and was astonished that those bulbs sucked.

Hey markc,
I had the same problem with my fogs, and I fixed it using weather stiping from menards. Its about .5 inch wide and about .5 inch tall, grey in color and I stuck it to the border on the top and bottom of the stock fog. I had to preety much wedge the fog assembly in there. But now they don't wiggle when I hit bumps ( you know how you can tell when your driving next to a bridge wall or something and you can always see light "quivering" along the wall). Its eliminated and I haven't wrecked a bulb since then.

I really need light coverage more then brighter light up front, so maybe I'll aim them up a tad and use my stockers. Thanks for the input guys/gays!

[MercMobile]

I guess maybe mine are just weird.. because the distance of which I can see ahead of me is the same if not a little further. So basically I have the same coverage with higher visibility.. maybe a different brand did it differently.. I have no complaints about my SuperWhites (which look blue) i/expressions/smile.gif