Topgeari4

Hey i have a 2002 civic lx coupe with stock headlights.
my question is do you guys prefer a brand of headlight bulbs over another and why ??
i though id ask you guys before replacing mine.

baron340

iTrader: (4)

i swapped mine with osram silverstars, but i've got tyc projectors and the yellowy bulbs that it came with look retarded in the projector. and i'm too cheap to do a hid retro.

gearbox

iTrader: (95)

the only one i would ever use if i had halogen is the philips XP xtreme power bulb. its the brightest and whitest halogen made. only the osram nightbreaker comes close. the rest are garbage.

avantgarde84

iTrader: (1)

Anyone heard of this bulbs called the HIR? Sounds like HID, but it's actually halogen using some special Infra red technology to amplify the light output. I have the 9006 low beams and 9005 hi beams on my civic and they sure are bright. Apparently the low beams is at 1700lumens, which is 70% more than stock halogen and similar to the Philips Xtreme power. The XP isn't available for 9006/9005 so the HIR seemed to be my best bet (HIRs only available for 9006/9005 anyway).

Topgeari4

Where can i buy the philips XP xtreme power bulb ? ( like what stores have them in stock )

thanks guys

gearbox

iTrader: (95)

www.powerbulbs.com

the HIR are the brightest bulb [by far] you can buy aside from HID, but they are not street legal. a good reflector tho like 2000+ model cars should be able to handle them without too much extra glare. and if youre running them on a stock wire harness, youre losing out on hundreds of lumens you would have if the bulb got the full 14v or higher power.

djdownfawl

What about these? Are these the most powerful?
http://www.powerbulbs.com/product_detail.asp?prod=40

gearbox

iTrader: (95)

those are brighter than stock, being hi watt bulbs that will melt the headlight housing and the stock wiring, but not recommended because they dont put out nearly as many lumens as other bulbs that run cooler and use less wattage.

heres a quick list of common solutions starting with the worst:

1. philips XP 55/60w H4 bulbs with upgrade wire harness (legal, brighter and whiter than stock)

2. osram HYPER 65/70w H4 bulbs with upgrade harness (wont ruin stock harness or housings, but you will not get the most amount of light from them using stock wiring), illegal because its several hundred lumens brighter than philips xp.

3. stock 55w oem bulbs with catz zeta ballast. no harness upgrade required, only booster ballasts that deliver over 15v to the bulb. makes them run at 2000 lumens or higher. very close to HIR lumens. may be complicated to wire since you must splice the stock wiring, not pnp.

4. HIR with upgrade wire harness will be the brightest solution without going hid.

now if you are feeling daring, and some people have done this with amazing results, you can run the HIR bulbs with catz zeta ballasts. they will be as bright as real HID except from a 55w halogen lol. the catz zeta says not to use it on hi wattage bulb, but technically the hir are not hi wattage. i havent tried this, but others have in their hi beams and said it drowns out the light from their hid 50w s2000 lo beam retro.

avantgarde84

iTrader: (1)

Hey gearbox, could you tell me more about how to upgrade the stock wire harness? Im pretty sure that I could have my HIRs go brighter than what I currently have, since Im also sure that my electrical system is constantly dropping voltage/power each time the radiator fan or air conditioning comes on (remember my last thread asking about why my lights flicker when they come on - lousy alternator). Does upgrading the wire harness mean stripping the stock wires and putting in new ones? Would be tough eh?

Btw why did you say 'if you're daring enough' try the ballasts with HIR? Are they risky? I recall you mentioning installing teh ballasts would be a real pain, but if there are proper instructions for doing it (perhaps from you?) I would like to give it a try. Certainly easier than doing a retro!!


EDIT: The HIRs in my stock halogen reflectors (2005 Civic) handle pretty well with very little glare, no one has high-beamed me ever. The 9005 Hi beam HIRs are super bright, rated about 2200lumens I think. I call them poor man HID...

djdownfawl

I want to have the LEGAL and MOST BRIGHTEST SOLUTION AVAILABLE ON THIS PLANET OF EARTH.
What would you recommend?

gearbox

iTrader: (95)

making wire harness is easy. all you need is a relay, a fuse and holder, and some wiring. basically you are making a whole new harness with thicker wire (usually 14 gauge is good, oem uses 20 gauge or smaller), and making sure the bulbs draw their power straight from the battery using the new beefier wires. the relay's job is to open and close to allow power to the bulb. a low volt trigger wire is tapped to the stock wiring to activate the relay. if you are designing a lo/hi dual harness it does get much more complicated in which case i would recommend just buying a premade pnp harness from suvlights.com instead.

LEGAL = philips XP period. nothing else compares. it won best buy award from autoexpress when they did all the bulb testing this october 2008. xp gets a beam score of 100, the only one that comes close is the osram nightbreaker at 94, but it falls short. if you compare to all the other bulbs tested, its pretty obvious how good it is.

http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/product...bulb_test.html

here are some pics of stock vs XP headlights on my civic with oem wire harness, no upgrade.

stock H4 (01-03 civic)



philips XP H4 (01-03 civic) notice how bright and white the beam is. it is a bit short, because they were aimed too low when i first installed them. be sure to always check aim after swapping any bulbs. at 25 ft from a white wall, the lower cutoff line should be 2 inch lower than the height of the headlight from the ground. ie, 2 inch beam drop at 25 ft.

gearbox

iTrader: (95)

here is a comparison with catz zeta boost between philips vp (old +50 bulbs) and philips xp (+80 bulb). exact same exposure time for each pic for a true comparison.

avantgarde84

iTrader: (1)

Is the harness you described similar to the relay harness for HIDs in terms of the wiring? So 4 wires come out of the relay: one wire each goes to the pos and neg, another goes to the stock bulb connector (as a trigger) and another wire branches into 2 wires, one each for left and right bulbs. So basically with the harness (also in the case of the HID relay harness) you hook it up direct to the battery and bypass the stock wiring. Am I correct?

I do realise this may only serve the purpose for the high OR low beams only, unless another harness is there for the seperate high or low beam as will be the case in my 05 civic. Maybe I should just buy it from somewhere, if I can find anyone who sells this. Is there a DIY for making a custom wire harness? Or is it too simple and I'm being an idiot?

djdownfawl

Did they upgrade their H4s?
Powerbulbs.com has a different packaging.
These have lifetime warranty vs 1 year.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/_Car-...3A1|240%3A1318

gearbox

iTrader: (95)

well lol the bulbs are all the same, philips has several different packages for the same bulb alot of times. that looks like the new package but really it doesnt matter. not sure how they plan to honor that warranty, obviously the bulbs burn out after about a year of use so i dont think that means they give you unlimited bulbs for life. maybe just one set or something if they have a defect.

for the wire harness, yeah its just like making a new hid harness (so that the ballasts get enough power on startup, and the stock wiring does not get damaged). here is my lo beam hid wiring harness for reference.

avantgarde84

iTrader: (1)

I emailed suvlights.com to enquire about their wiring harness but apparently for international/non-US customers like myself I have to show them my bank statement or credit card bill for verification of my name, address etc. Such a pain, and they being pretty unfriendly in their reply, I turned to good ol eGay and found this: http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Harne...Q5fAccessories

From their description and pic, I'm not sure if this harness will hook up to all 4 bulbs ie 2 low beams (9006) and 2 high beams (9005). Looks like there are 2 identical harnesses each with its own relay that are taped together! It's 14G though, and much cheaper than $63 on suvlights. So is this good or what?

gearbox

iTrader: (95)

ya that seems like it would work. hopefully it doesnt come apart tho if its crappily made. but its worth trying. usually the relays on those things go bad faster than normal but auto stores sell those for $5 or less.

Topgeari4

so wait gearbox if i buy the philips XP xtreme power bulb i will have to upgrade my wiring harness ?
what are the brightest and whitest bulbs that u can use with the stock harness without any modifications to it ??

sicma99ot

i use xenon 8k hids. output sucks unless using high beams.

avantgarde84

iTrader: (1)

AS long as you are not putting in a HID ballast the stock wiring will work fine. Only reason he was mentioning about upgrading the wire harness is if you would like to have BRIGHTER lights, but the stock harness is still useable like it is currently on your civic. The Philips bulb is the normal 55W bulb which is the same as your stock headlight bulbs now.

Brightest and whitest bulbs and legal=Philips xtreme power as gearbox mentioned in earlier posts. No mods needed to stock wiring unless you want it to be brighter.

my 2 cents...

GotToyota?

I'm with him. Best bulbs out there minus HID's.

http://www.powerbulbs.com/product_detail.asp?prod=43

gearbox

iTrader: (95)

the philips xp can be used with stock harness. but as you can see, an upgrade harness will make them brighter. even small voltage drops can cost you big lumens. and if your alternator is putting out 14.2v, by the time that power makes it to the headlights thru the small stock harness wires, it might only be around 12-13v at best actually reaching the bulbs. it wont mess up anything, the bulb will just be dimmer.

avantgarde84

iTrader: (1)

Just wondering, if I were to use the Catz Zeta with my HIRs with upgrade wire harness, will it blow the bulbs? Sounds like good amount of power flowing through tho. Gearbox, do you happen to have any wiring diagrams or advice on installing the ballasts?

Topgeari4

thanks guys
so just to review im going to buy these
http://www.powerbulbs.com/product_detail.asp?prod=43

anyone know how many days it will take to ship into new jersey ?

gearbox

iTrader: (95)

took about a week to get stuff i ordered from there.

as for the catz zeta, you should not upgrade the wire harness, its a waste of time. the catz zeta works by taking any input voltage as low as 9v i believe and then through the ballast circuitry, boosts it up to 15.4v and then sends it to the bulbs. they give you very detailed instructions on how the ballasts work, its just cut and splice so that the stock wires go into the ballast and then come out the ballast to the bulb. i know several people running boosted HIR bulbs without problems. one thing i never did was get the lo and hi beam to work together for H4 setup at least. the ballast does have two sets of inputs and outputs, but they are not allowed to work together at the same time. so if you switch to hi beam mode, in order for the boost to transfer from lo beam to hi beam, the lo beam must shut off. it will take a bit of time to figure out the wiring, but its doable to make both lo and hi beam boosted (only one turned on at a time). another advantage of using the ballasts is your lights will never flicker or dim due to voltage drops. the ballast maintains constant voltage at all times.

gearbox

iTrader: (95)

from hidp-

avantgarde84

iTrader: (1)

Hmmm so will it be just upgrading the harness or going with ballasts? Both will still make the bulbs brighter, although the ballasts will beat the harness upgrade only correct? Splicing the stock wires may be difficult to reverse back especially when you are about to sell the car. I wouldn't mind boosting only the lo beams since that's what I use 95% of the time anyway, but the other concern would be with the heat production then I suppose.

Oh well, if the wire harness upgrade can give me brighter lights than what I currently have, I might just buy it and leave the ballasts for REAL HID...

djdownfawl

I dont undestand.
BTW i ordered the H4 harness from Suvlights.com
Ok the other thing was i ordered XP for my camry which takes 9006/9005. They make 9006 so i ordered that. The other person on the earlier post was saying they dont make 9006.
I dont understand.

gearbox

iTrader: (95)

harness upgrade is okay, you might not even notice the difference to be honest because our cars do not have a very large voltage drop. the bulbs actually get almost 13.9v so just harness prolly wont be noticable. catz zeta will be much more noticable and in fact, you will see the difference every time you power on the headlight. its takes 1-2 seconds for the boost to kick in, so when you first turn them on, you see the stock non boosted output. then they boost up and you go wow more light! i ran catz zeta with stock bulbs for about 6 months before going hid, and alot of times i would have them on for hours at a time. it never messed up the headlamps in any way. if you are worried about splicing, i would recommend just buy a pnp harness and plug it in. its better than nothing. and run hir bulbs off the harness if you can. i think 04-05 civic headlight you should be able to mod them to fit. and with hir, you want them getting as much voltage as possible.

gearbox

iTrader: (95)

the 9006 philips xp is actually brand new, it was just released not too long ago. previously, they only had H4 and H7 sizes. but now they have 9006.

for the aiming, heres what you do. install the new bulbs. then drive to a place where there is a white wall and park the car 25 ft away from it. so from the front of the car to the wall is 25ft distance. make sure the ground is flat. then next to your car with a measuring tape, measure the distance from the ground up to the middle of the headlight housing (where the bulb is). walk over to the wall and measure that same distance up from the ground and make a mark on the wall. so if your headlight bulb was 3 ft from the ground, on the wall your mark should be 3ft above the ground. now that you have the mark telling you how high your headlight is, look at the beam of light on the wall. there should be some sort of defining line between the light below and the darkness above. this is called the cutoff line. usually it will have a lower line on the left and a higher line on the right. this is so that oncoming traffic doesnt get blinded, but also so you can see more to the right. cutoff shapes vary, and with a reflector it may not be perfect, but some shapes include angled like ___/ or more of a flat shape like ___--- while most projector cutoffs have a defined step like ___/---- so it will vary. what you want to do is look at the lower cutoff line. you want this line to fall 2 inches below the old mark you made on the wall. so adjust the beam with the headlight adjustment screws until it is 2 inch lower than the mark you made. if the lower cutoff is exactly where the mark is, it means your light beam has no drop/slope and will blind traffic. this is the standard rule for car headlight aiming. and before you start, make sure the car is prepped like how you would normally drive it. stuff like gas level, heavy stuff in trunk, etc will all affect headlight aiming. so aim them according to what you normally carry in the car.

btw just so theres no confusion, your camry uses 9006 LO beam bulbs and 9005 HI beam bulbs. they are not swappable as 9006 runs at 55w with a silver cap and 9005 runs at 65w with no cap. you can use a 9005 as a lo beam with modification to the bulb base, but there is a good chance you will blind traffic.