Ok, very interesting info but first, I thought this was a Tech Section, not a For Sale Section.
The $20,000 question, if we run 55 watt incandescent bulbs with no problem, but when we swap to a lower wattage 35 watt HID bulb, how come the wiring and headlight switch can’t handle it? The ballast does not need that much power to provide 35 watts to the bulb (relatively speaking) and I have seen a total of only 42 watts for both, but that’s less than 55 watts. I know the answer, was just wondering if gaugeprower knew, and to spark the same thought in others?
The good ones you state to only use, like the OEM units in higher end cars, are not offered with a bulb that works in anything other than an HID lamp, as in D1S, D2R, D3S D3R, D4S D4R etc. We can use the better ballasts, but will never (correct me if I missed these of late) get the good OEM type bulbs from Osram/Sylvania, Hella, Philips etc in a conversion bulb setup for a 9006 or H4 or whatever.
Other aftermarket ballasts, made by all kinds of companies, many by the same with a different label. So, it goes both ways, bad and good ones from Japan, China, Korea, Germany etc, who is to say for sure what you buy will work and for how long, also not fry your wiring or the front end of your car, won’t cause interference with your electrical system (the good ones have filters to limit the normal 400 Hz from getting back into the car’s electrical system). Yes McCulloch and some others are top quality, but not $90 that so many people can’t help but jump on, or can only afford.
Being schooled myself by a young buddy of mine who got active (I was done, bought what I needed at the time) recently tells me the blue is not in the OEM bulbs, but the coating on the bulb and/or the lens doing this (don’t quote me on that exactly, but the bulbs are suppose to still all be 4,100 or thereabouts), and is from the filter there that takes out the harmful UV rays. That to me is why OEM bulbs no matter their color coming out, are always crystal clear with that color, whereas aftermarket blue-ish and purple-ish bulbs all seem a bit fuzzy/blurring in their color, sucks.
The HID Bi-Xenon’s I have function differently than the ones you explain. Mine have a small solenoid that snaps open the blinder on the shield releasing light for the high beam to happen from the same bulb (meaning not a dual bulb, or an HID with a piggybacked incandescent for the high beam).
Higher color Kelvin bulbs might look color, and OH YEA they do, but their brightness or lumens, as they use to rate bulb’s light output is less and less (one of the reasons 50 watt HIDs came out). And their color rendering index/CRI falls off more and more, meaning the quality of the light for what it is needed for; to light the way ahead of you so you can see clearly/see well drops off with lower CRI numbers. Higher CRI numbers will help in keeping what you see as what it is, instead of bleaching it out and at times, making it hard to look at (bluer lights are harder to look at than yellowish incandescent type of the same lumens). There is enough validity to this that there are experts that insist that 6k and up bulbs are a bad idea for lighting, but like everything on this forum; inform the people, but if they still want to go outside of the recommendations, let them, it’s their life to live, their money to spend how they want, and their ticket to get, we tried to help them
.
And aside from the info above for others to read about, your mission to find yellow or the better amber yellow H3C bulbs might be addressed by looking at a lamp that has the yellow or amber yellow lens, like the PIAA 950s in my picture above, or did you miss my one first posting :rotf: ?
Jeff M
