Replacement Xenon bulbs

Clarkey

Clarkey

Clarkey

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
18,306
Guys, now that the nights are drawing in and the weather has gone downhill I'm obviously using the headlights a lot now. My car has factory Xenon lights with D4S bulbs, and frankly I've been finding the light is pretty poor. When the roads are wet in particular, it's hard to tell if the lights are even on sometimes, and it's a little scary driving on unlit country roads, with oncoming vehicles it can be hard to see anything tbh. It's a little odd because on dry tarmac the light isn't bad.
I'm thinking of taking the plunge and buying new bulbs, obviously they are quite pricey and I'm sceptical whether it is really going to be the answer to the problem since my lights don't have any of the usual tell-tale signs of failing bulbs like flickering or changing colour.

In your guys opinion do you think spending £110 on Xenarc nightbreaker lasers is a good move?

FWIW, the lights are aimed properly and the lenses are nice and clear.
 
Hmm that's not a glowing report. This car only has Xenon low beams, halogen high beams are very good.
It's a bit odd that the lights aren't good on this car. I had the same car before with the same lights and the old one had phenomenal headlights.
 
Having done a little more digging since reading these opinions here, it looks like the spec on the Osram bulbs is the same across the range. From the basic Xenarc Xenon to the range topper Xenarc nightbreaker laser, they are all 3200lm.
How can they claim some have +200% when they have the same lumen output?
 
I don't think there is a ballast issue, the lights both strike up immediately and don't have any flicker or anything like that.
The only thing I have noticed is that with the driver side light the beam cutoff is a little fuzzy and out of focus where the passenger side is sharp.
Maybe I'll pick up some OE replacement Phillips from euro in a bit and try that. Think i'll try to clean the projector lens if I can reach it too.
 
Possible, it is a 2006 car after all. I think that one of the bulbs at least is on the way out. I measured the light output, 1 of them is 5900 lux, the other is only 2100 and that result follows the bulb when swapped sides. I'm going to grab new bulbs tomorrow and see what the improvement is like. If that's no good then maybe I'll look at the rx350 projector swap, meant to be the best projectors going. Thinking about it, maybe my old MarkX already had that conversion, the lights were seriously good.
 
I'm into that, not too into the ball ache of pulling the bumper, lights, then splitting them to do get the projector out.

Only managed to get hold of one bulb from euros today, got the other on order. Replaced the poorer one of the two, before and after measurement saw triple the lux with the new bulb, looks really nice. It's dry tonight but I drove it on some unlit roads and there is a marked improvement, should be a touch better with the other bulb replaced too.
 
So these damn bulbs are continuing to be a problem for me. I ended up getting Lucas bulbs from ECP because they didn't have the Philips ones. That said, couple of weeks later the drivers side bulb started turning a pinkish yellow hue. I took it back and they replaced it for another one. Now not much longer than a week later, the same thing happened again.
So it looks like I either have a faulty ballast or I've had 2 faulty bulbs. Those of you that are more experienced with this kind of thing, which of these scenarios seems more likely?
 
No, just the drivers side. Tempted to swap the bulbs around but don't want to blow another one if it does turn out to be a ballast issue.
 
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