EL5DEMON340
Well-Known Member
What’s a good H4 bulb to go along with the hella 002 395301 lense Upgrade? Is the Phillips xtream vision still rated highly? slantsixdan ? Thanks
Good H4 bulbs
- Thread starter EL5DEMON340
- Start date
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I had good results with Bosch H-4 bulbs
slantsixdan
=..=
Bosch doesn't make bulbs — they never have. They PFR 'em. That's Purchase For Resale, a practice much more common now in the parts world than it used to be. It's fashionable now for brands to try to be all things for all people; remember when Raybestos was a brand of brake parts and only brake parts? Yeah, now they slap that brand on all kinds of parts. Peak used to be a brand of engine coolant; now they're claiming to be light bulb specialists, too. Car and Driver used to be just a magazine — now you can buy their branded oil filters.
To an MBA, it's all just 'product'. Which is why NAPA's bulb line, which used to have a high percentage of quality bulbs from Narva in Germany, is now all awful-quality Chinese dreck.
(end of that rant, for now)
Bosch-branded bulbs are usually from at least a second-line maker with decent quality control. Not the world's best bulbs, but nowhere near the worst. Hella-branded bulbs (also never made by Hella) were PFR from the world's reputable makers up until about 1996; since then they've been mostly low-bid items with 'quality' to match.
Bulbs are not all alike. There's no magic bulb that transforms a crummy headlamp into a good one, but bulb selection matters a lot to how well you can (or can't) see at night.
Any of the bulbs claiming to produce "extra white" light (or super white, hyper white, platinum white, metal white, xenon white, etc) as its main promotional "benefit" is best avoided. It doesn't matter whose name is on the bulb—Sylvania SilverStar/Ultra or ZxE, Philips BlueVision or CrystalVision, Wagner TruView, anything from PIAA or Hoen,, Nokya, Polarg, etc.—all the same scam. They have a blue-tinted glass, which changes the light color a little, but blocks light that would reach the road if the glass weren't tinted, so they give you less light than ordinary bulbs (not more). To get legal-minimum levels of light through the blue glass, the filament has to be driven very hard so these bulbs have a very short lifespan, and there's nothing about the tinted light that improves your ability to see—the opposite is true (less light = less seeing, no matter about the tint). Sylvania got spanked to the tune of thirty million dollars for false and misleading "upgrade" claims for Silver Star bulbs, and those are among the least-bad of an overall bad product category, so the math kind of does itself.
Stock/standard bulbs are a long-life type—automakers like these because it stops people demanding new bulbs under the new-vehicle warranty, but that's about their only advantage. The filament configuration required to make a long-life bulb tends to reduce the output, luminance and beam focus, which shortens seeing distance and makes the light browner. The opposite filament changes are made to create high-luminance bulbs: lifespan is shorter, but luminance and output are higher and the beam focus is better so seeing distance is longer and beam coverage is wider. Light color is whiter and less brown. And the lifespan difference is less stark than it might seem, because the long-life bulbs not only start out dimmer, but they last (i.e., keep lighting up) long enough to lose _significant_ amounts of their original output. The higher-performing bulbs burn out before they drop much of any intensity.
This page is from a Hella technical paper. It goes into some detail on the low-beam performance difference between a standard bulb and a higher-luminance bulb. When it was written in 1997, the state of the art was young, so this is a comparison between a new standard bulb and a new "+30" bulb with modestly increased luminance:
The difference is bigger when comparing long-life/low-luminance bulbs with some hours on them, and even bigger still because additional research and development has brought us to the present where we have even better high-luminance bulbs.
What's the best H4 bulb on the planet? The +250 bulb examined and tested here. It's made to my specs, specifically for me, but the linked testing is not mine. I'm out of 'em right now (more in about 20 days); the next-best one is also made for me, a +240 that costs less and is on shelf.
If the question is "Yahbut, which bulb that I can buy without going thru Dan?", then it's tough to beat this one, which is a +30 item — not as high-zoot as mine, but they last longer, too, and they're a consistently-good-quality bulb, with untinted glass, that gives better performance than a standard bulb.
New lamps or old, their aim is by far the main thing that determines how well you can (or can't) see at night, and how much glare you're throwing around, especially with high-output bulbs. Pretty good odds your headlamps (and fog lamps, as applicable) aren't well aimed; even many brand-new vehicles have poorly-aimed lamps. And if you remove and replace the lamps, even with the same ones you removed (let alone different ones!), the aim won't carry over after replacement.
So, this is crucial: you will need to see to it that your new lamps are all aimed carefully and correctly per the instructions here. That particular Hella lamp you're getting, the 'Vision Plus" DOT item, can also be aimed with the olde-tyme Hoppy sealed beam aiming tool as shown in this movie.
To an MBA, it's all just 'product'. Which is why NAPA's bulb line, which used to have a high percentage of quality bulbs from Narva in Germany, is now all awful-quality Chinese dreck.
(end of that rant, for now)
Bosch-branded bulbs are usually from at least a second-line maker with decent quality control. Not the world's best bulbs, but nowhere near the worst. Hella-branded bulbs (also never made by Hella) were PFR from the world's reputable makers up until about 1996; since then they've been mostly low-bid items with 'quality' to match.
Bulbs are not all alike. There's no magic bulb that transforms a crummy headlamp into a good one, but bulb selection matters a lot to how well you can (or can't) see at night.
Any of the bulbs claiming to produce "extra white" light (or super white, hyper white, platinum white, metal white, xenon white, etc) as its main promotional "benefit" is best avoided. It doesn't matter whose name is on the bulb—Sylvania SilverStar/Ultra or ZxE, Philips BlueVision or CrystalVision, Wagner TruView, anything from PIAA or Hoen,, Nokya, Polarg, etc.—all the same scam. They have a blue-tinted glass, which changes the light color a little, but blocks light that would reach the road if the glass weren't tinted, so they give you less light than ordinary bulbs (not more). To get legal-minimum levels of light through the blue glass, the filament has to be driven very hard so these bulbs have a very short lifespan, and there's nothing about the tinted light that improves your ability to see—the opposite is true (less light = less seeing, no matter about the tint). Sylvania got spanked to the tune of thirty million dollars for false and misleading "upgrade" claims for Silver Star bulbs, and those are among the least-bad of an overall bad product category, so the math kind of does itself.
Stock/standard bulbs are a long-life type—automakers like these because it stops people demanding new bulbs under the new-vehicle warranty, but that's about their only advantage. The filament configuration required to make a long-life bulb tends to reduce the output, luminance and beam focus, which shortens seeing distance and makes the light browner. The opposite filament changes are made to create high-luminance bulbs: lifespan is shorter, but luminance and output are higher and the beam focus is better so seeing distance is longer and beam coverage is wider. Light color is whiter and less brown. And the lifespan difference is less stark than it might seem, because the long-life bulbs not only start out dimmer, but they last (i.e., keep lighting up) long enough to lose _significant_ amounts of their original output. The higher-performing bulbs burn out before they drop much of any intensity.
This page is from a Hella technical paper. It goes into some detail on the low-beam performance difference between a standard bulb and a higher-luminance bulb. When it was written in 1997, the state of the art was young, so this is a comparison between a new standard bulb and a new "+30" bulb with modestly increased luminance:
The difference is bigger when comparing long-life/low-luminance bulbs with some hours on them, and even bigger still because additional research and development has brought us to the present where we have even better high-luminance bulbs.
What's the best H4 bulb on the planet? The +250 bulb examined and tested here. It's made to my specs, specifically for me, but the linked testing is not mine. I'm out of 'em right now (more in about 20 days); the next-best one is also made for me, a +240 that costs less and is on shelf.
If the question is "Yahbut, which bulb that I can buy without going thru Dan?", then it's tough to beat this one, which is a +30 item — not as high-zoot as mine, but they last longer, too, and they're a consistently-good-quality bulb, with untinted glass, that gives better performance than a standard bulb.
New lamps or old, their aim is by far the main thing that determines how well you can (or can't) see at night, and how much glare you're throwing around, especially with high-output bulbs. Pretty good odds your headlamps (and fog lamps, as applicable) aren't well aimed; even many brand-new vehicles have poorly-aimed lamps. And if you remove and replace the lamps, even with the same ones you removed (let alone different ones!), the aim won't carry over after replacement.
So, this is crucial: you will need to see to it that your new lamps are all aimed carefully and correctly per the instructions here. That particular Hella lamp you're getting, the 'Vision Plus" DOT item, can also be aimed with the olde-tyme Hoppy sealed beam aiming tool as shown in this movie.
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Would you ever consider writing a book, or even a pamphlet, Dan? I'd buy several for my reference library, even more if you autographed a couple of them. Not just blowing smoke up your skirt, I'll bet you could sell a bunch on FABO alone. Your knowledge is applicable to today's lighting, not just our 50+ year old dinosaurs.
Never mind, I just found your website. Anyways, thanks for being a member of FABO!
EL5DEMON340
Well-Known Member
Great info !!! Thanks for helping me and others out on this subject.
Mattax
Just the facts, ma'am
So does that mean the Narva Range Powers I bought from you back then are now collectibles?
Maybe this Norma is though...certainly the lamp it came with is.
There's an extra s in the underlying URL
removing it links to a Sylvania product at 'zon if thats what you intended to link to
Impressive.
I see you now carry Kioto equivalent to the 6052.
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slantsixdan
=..=
Wull, kinda! They're no longer made. But that's not enough to make even the likes of me hoard 'em any more.
Made out of quartz, iodine instead of bromine in the fill gas. Norma (French bulb maker) was one of the companies Philips swallowed up in their buying spree of '90-'92.
...certainly the lamp it came with is.
Guessing 70-34-02
Oops! Fixed.
I see you now carry Kioto equivalent to the 6052.
While they last. They're being discontinued; I'm about to place my last-ever order for 'em.
Mattax
Just the facts, ma'am
Yep!
Are the Boschs you had a couple years ago still available? I have no complaints.While they last. They're being discontinued; I'm about to place my last-ever order for 'em.
slantsixdan
=..=
No, the Bosch units went outta production.
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