Lighting upgrade, in my search for more lights... Options

[Rayme]

If some of you are like my and totally not interested in those fake, overly expensive short lived "blue" hid like bulbs, well I feel your pain, the general concessus seems to be "buy silverstars and like it".

There is 2 "legal" options to results in actual more light output, and both costs less than 50$ !
Both will results in 3400+ lumens from low beams instead of the regular 2000 lumens (hid would results in the 6000 lumens), thats almost 170% more lights! Also your beam pattern will remain the same, so glaring is almost a non issue if you have your lights properly aimed

So what is it?

1. HIR bulbs

-HIR bulbs are not well known but works really well. They are special bulbs coated in an infrared reflective coating thats sends back heat to the filament resulting in almost 80% more light output than regular halogen bulb at the same wattage and lifespan. (halogen being 1000 lumens, HIR is 1875 lumens).

You can google about the technology, or theres that one seller on ebay that sells them, they are expensive though.

http://cgi.ebay.ca/TOSHIBA-HIR-9011-9012-B...1QQcmdZViewItem

The bulb will requires small modifications to the socket to fit into the low beams.


2. 9006 to 9005 conversion.
This will result in a little less light than HIR but is easier(bulbs are common) and cheaper. Basicly you modify the high beam bulb (9005) to make it fit into the low beam headlight. High beams bulb outputs 1700 lumens vs 1000 for low beams. You need to modify the socket for them to make it work. As you can see in the image, they are very similar and the 9005 has not coating at the top end. The only small disadvantage is these use 65 watts instead of 55. Your wiring/socket might handle the 10 watts over or might not, its a risk to take, or just upgrade your wiring for safety's sake.


This is a little messed up but you get the idea, I'll be doing the 9006-9005 convertion myself, possibly with silverstars.
These are a great alternative to stock housing HID retrofit which are, illegal, unreliable, expensive and dangerous for other drivers.

This post has been edited by Rayme: Feb 22, 2007 - 12:02 PM