Hello everyone & Happy New Year,

I was wondering if anyone is aware of any issues around replacing the standard 65/45 9004 bulbs with higher wattage (maybe 100/80) bulbs. Also does anyone have any recommedations of which manufacturers make the best ones.

Thanks-

JV

 

Hey JV, I replaced my headlight bulbs with the PIAA SuperWhite's that were 110/90 or 100/80 (I can't remember which one) and they worked fine. I have since changed to Naxos Plasma Blue bulbs that are AMAZING. I am so impressed with the quality and duration of these bulbs that I am going to replace my PIAA H3 Plamsa Bulbs with the Naxos H3 bulbs. They run 70 a pair in the store, but you can get them off of ebay significantly lower. They are great bulbs that have not given me any problems with the wiring harness. They illuminate at 100/80 and are very good HID replicas. Better than the PIAA Plasmas.

 

I have tried several brands of bulbs. Any bulb that has a blue coating is much worse than the stock bulb. All those blub that claim to be HID look alike are useless. They only look good, but their lighting is terrible. The fact is that any bulb with a blue coating is already filtering the light that is emitted by the bulb. Many people claim that the white/bluish light produced by those blue coated bulbs (such as PIAA, Visions, Naxos, etc...) improve visibility.

Try a pair of Hella 100/80 bulbs. They are much brighter and have a better quality gas mixture. They are very bright at night, even on rainy nights. For the fog lights, just pick up a 100 watt H3 bulb at your local car shop. I have had this setup for 4 months and haven't had any problems with the wire harness melting. Compared to all the HID wanna be bulbs I tried before, this setup is by far the best performing one. It does not look as cool as the other ones, but you'll see better.

MaxMA

 

the piaa superwhite runs on stock 65/45 wattage, but claim to be as bright as 100 watt bulbs. so the with piaa superwhites you shouldn't have any problem. However, if you install bulbs that ARE running on 80/100 or above watts, your harness WILL melt within few months. i would recommend you to install harness upgrades (such as the one from APC) if you want to install high wattage bulbs. here is another tip, if you buy any non-big-brand bulbs, remember to check the bulb itself before installing. Once i bought a pair of hyper industry bulbs that claim to operate at stock wattage on the box, but the bulb itself actully says 100/120 watts. i didn't check before i install them, and they melted my harness.

 

Get the APC upgrade harness...or you'll fry your OEM connectors.

Hella, Philips and Sylvania all make good bulbs.

 

I just installed my APC 80/100w bulbs and harness last night. The bulbs are blue coated and do provide a much whiter color, brighter than stock and are surprisingly not much glare which was one of my major concern prior to getting them...want to be somewhat courteous to on coming drivers. When looking at the light you however see a small/faint blue glare coming from center of the headlight, which i'd rather not have, due to the blue coating but the surrounding light is still very white...not sure how the cops gonna react to this. Be aware however that your eyes may need to get used to the difference in color/brightness between stock and apc because u'll be looking at a much bigger contrast between where your lights shine and the dark area outside of its range. Also more glare from the road surface if it's wet...gotta get myself some fogs now

Hoang,

 

Here's a website that talks about lighting issues. Loads of info.

http://lighting.mbz.org/tech/info/

And if you want to get brighter bulbs that are stock wattage, look into Philips BlueVision. Brighter than stock but at stock wattage, so no need to get a harness.

 

i have tried about 8 different types of bulbs and i melted all my wire harnesses then i got the apc harnes and it melted too. i recomend to either stay stock or if ur willing to spend the money get the real hid lights

 

Your stuff will melt with 80/100 .. It'll be great for the first couple of months but then you'll have problems (like I'm having now! hehe). If you can stick with the 65's, do it. If not, go with a harness.

 

How much is a new harness?

 

I haven't any problems with the headlights, but I had a bunch of problems with the foglights.... I have APC Superwhite 100/80's and I haven't had any melting problems, or even any burning out problems for that matter...

 

hmm if you have the APC harness and it melts then you should hook up an inline fuse of 30amp? to each of the wire that goes from the relay to the battery in case u have a spike or short.

Hoang,

 

Ok,when your harness fries what happenes. Iveheardthat its a 5 dollar fix, to its a 600 dollar fix, to usually all that happenes is the bulb blows. Grrr. I wanna know the truth!! Ive had Nokya 80/100's in since xmas, and nothing has blown up yet...

 

it's a 5 bucks fix, basically it's that piece of plastic plug that's gonna melt, so u just replace that. The 600 is meant for the whole wireing, which is unnecesary.

 

...think I made a mistake when saying to hook up an inline fuse of 30mp to EACH of the wire from the relay. It should be only ONE 20amp fuse for the two wires COMBINED, unless you have it setup so that both hi and lo beams stay on when u switch on the hi beam then u'd need ONE 30amp fuse for both wires. How i'm arriving at these numbers is taking the highest number of watts for the 2 bulbs, in normal case it'd be 200w for hi beams, and divide this by 12v coming from the battery to get 16.67amps and since there are only 2 fuse settings that i know of in this range, 15a and 20a, I pick 20a to avoid the full potential output of the bulbs from NOT being used. Can someone with electrical knowledge wanna double check my maths and sanity?

Hoang,