as per the subject

want to improve bulbs as standard ones suck! are they all the same really (the h4 ones), or are some better than others:

philips vision plus £19.50
osram silver star £19.50
xenon £14.99
cobalt blue £13.99

(all +50%)

or are some of the +30% ones for £10ish good enough?

what do u reckon?

[Edited by milo - 1/29/2004 1:32:43 PM]

If you get around the marketing hype and 'Britain is the dumping ground for the worlds auto accessories this is quite a simple answer (Although a tad long winded).

The car manufacturers go to extraordinary lengths to make sure that the warranty they offer is not needed. Therefore to be a supplier to the OE industry the prerequisites on quality are some of the highest in the world. The OE world of light sources (bulbs) revolves primarily around 3 criteria. PPM levels. This is the Parts per million failure level measured at a number of strategic places. During production of the lamp, during life testing of the lamps, during the cars manufacturing process and finally out on the road during warranty. Secondly is the Weibull distribution. This is the life expectancy of the lamp measured at certain critical % of failure. You are left with what the industry calls 'Characteristic life'. This is what you the customer will see as the life of the lamp. Finally and not least price. You can assume that the lamps (bulbs) that are therefore used in OE are as good as it gets. In the Aachen factory of Philips where the bulk of its H4 lamps are made there are over 70 individual tests on the lamp at various stages of its construction to ensure this quality. I personally signed a contract that said if we stopped a certain car line due to a quality defect in the product it would cost the company $60,000 per hour!!!!. Therefore the names to stick with when looking at Do the lamps really do what is claimed the brands are Philips, Osram , GE and Koito.

The lamps you list offer there increase in performance by increased luminance which I have explained before. In my personal experience go for the 50% product as the prices you have quoted can be easily beaten on offers etc. The Xenon, Cobalt are product that is produced in primarily Taiwan, China and Korea. They cost much less than $1 to make, have little quality and sell on peoples ignorance. The biggest market by over 60% for this Asian product (I know I have been around there factories) is the UK. If there product was any good and so cheap the OE car manufacturers would use them. The initial outlay is slightly higher but you are buying genuine quality with these brands and not just marketing and packaging. In the long run the cost (of ownership) is cheaper with a known brand. Better performance, better life, less failures both infant and during life etc.

I am only talking here about light sources and appreciate that in other product this may not be the case.

If I can help further let me know

Nick
www.autolamps-online.com

What Nick said:D:

Also: in tests I looked at in Auto Express, the Philips lamps produced the most consistently accurate beam pattern, with other cheaper lamps putting so much light elsewhere that they actually gave a worse light output than standard bulbs!!!:eek:

I had PVP in mine, and am now running GE Megalight 60% uprated which I got from Nick, (cheers mate), and I love them.

OK, if I could afford HID's I'd have 'em, but for the moment..........

Alcazar

thanks guys!

btw, nick - your site says imprezas should use h1/3 for dip/full beam... other sites say its h4 for both. could u explain that - i dont really understand the differences between the numbers.

thanks!

New shape MY01 and 02 "blob eye" WRX's use H4, this is a combined dip and main bulb.

I think all of the old shape classic Imprezas, inc WRX's and STi's, also use H4 but not 100% sure.

Newer shape MY01 and 02 "blobby eye" STi's use H1 for dip beam and HB3 (aka 9005) for main beam.

Very new shape MY03 and MY04 WRX and STi's both use the the same as MY02 STi's.

Obviously anything non-standard like morrettes will change this.

Looking on a list of cars and choosing Imprezza and expecting a accurate and reliable answer is a bit optimistic I think.

How much for the GE 60% bulbs (H4)?

I have PVP in the Impreza which I got for £20 from Powerbulbs.com and are pretty good (considering how bad the headlight design is), and need a set of decent bulbs for my Audi which is also H4 and are also dreadful (possibly even worse than the Scoob). Are the GE better than PVP?

I reckon they're a bit better.

About the same price from Autolamps.

Alcazar

i dont see the ge+60% ones on the autolamps site. are they not there or am i being stupid again? :eek:

could someone provide me with a direct link?