I'm looking to upgrade the headlight bulbs in my 01 UK300, and have seen some Xenon 8500k bulbs. What kind of difference would this make over the standard bulbs, if any? Or can anyone suggest anything better without converting to a HID setup?

Thanks

 

Not really sure how BULBS can be advertised as "8500K", as this refers to the colour temperature of the HID lamp unit, and bulbs can't possibly reach that sort of temperature.

IIRC, 4300K is like daylight, so the best for SEEING by, 6500K is bluer, while 8500K will be VERY blue, so very bling, but if SEEING better is the object...............?

I assume you've tried the well worn routes of Philips Vision Plus, or GE Megalights, 50%/60% uprated? Or even higher wattage lamps?

Alcazar

 

ive seen loads of them bulbs and well, pretty cheap on ebay and i have wonderd myself

if there cheap, get them bought and try them out?
the bulbs i use are ring sports blue, which are mostly white, although they are 100watt and not road legal, they seam to blow every 4 months or so, and all my mates sets go at around the same time, so i picked up a set of "osram silver stars" which have been rated elsewhere, ring ones have not blew scince, typical

still dont know how the osrams fair as i have never fitted them (sitting in the glove box doing nothing lol)

 

Like sticky mickey, I have seen these advertised on e-bay. I want the blueish tints, but also better visability and brightness.
Can the temperature of the bulbs can any damage in any way?

 

Colour temperature is not the same as heat temperature so a higher colour temperature will not cause damage.

As previously posted the experts have advised that best visibility is with a clour temperature of around 4000K. To get a pronounced blue tinge you need much higher colour temperature. But you can't have both, fact of life, "you canna change the laws of physics" as someone once said....

 

Hi. I've got 8500k bulbs from ebay on my wrx and they are much better. They are really white with a hint of blue. I would highly recommend these. Auto dezign are the best ones i've had on ebay. make sure you get 8500k. At night they have that sort of xenon look. I had a clio 182 before with real xenons and these are fine still.

 

If you are going purely for styling then I cannot comment on what looks good on your car as this is an independent thing. However degrees Kelvin are purely a reference to colour. If you are familiar with paint shop or any other pc desk top publishing package you will know that colour consist in their simplest forms of Red Green and Blue (the primaries). Now if you take a ref point of lets say 25 R, 25G, 25B you have a mix which gives you a colour. This is the same with 8500K, it’s simply a colour reference. If you want to get technical it’s a colour point on the black body curve but it’s just a colour. Standard discharge lighting is 4200K which after 1000 hours use due to SDCM will be closer to 5000K. Daylight is 6500K.

Now to get this colour on a halogen lamp all these Asian lamps do is put a dark blue filter on the glass. While this changes the colour it also hugely reduces the light output which is measured in lumens and CDm2. Therefore if you want better light to see by and a slightly hotter colour temperature 3800K compared to 3400k for STD halogen go for the Philips, GE or Osram +60% products. This is not a my cats blacker than your its scientific evidence. See here and here if you wish to learn more

http://www.hid-online.com/hidonline/...colourtemp.htm

http://www.autolamps-online.com/howwhy/index.htm

Nick
www.hid-online.com
www.autolamps-online.com

 

As always, if you want the "gen", Nick's your man.

Alcazar