My headlights have Silverstar 9006 Bulbs and the Fog lights have OEM 9006 Bulbs.

 

I agree with panasoanic, BUT... I bet that the beam pattern of certain HID retrofit kits illuminates more of the road (away from the center) than stock. Although I agree that it is not an optimal bulb placement and the beam pattern is not safe for others. Yep. Sucks for everyone else. Somewhat good for the driver.

 

It's odd...no matter which car forum you visit this is always a touchy subject.

...BTW Panasonic is right.

Happy holidays :D

 

It can at least be said that Silverstars are the best clear bulbs out there for the money. Whether or not it improves or degrades light quality is a hot topic (although, Panasonic is the one here who can back it up with numbers) The silverstars look extremely nice compared to stock (which isn't bad either). I mean, just look at the shots nycazn79 took, they're beautiful! And they won't blind others like some HID retrofit!

 

From Daniel Stern's site:

"The most dangerous part of the attempt to "retrofit" Xenon headlamps is that sometimes you get a deceptive and illusory "improvement" in the performance of the headlamp. The performance of the headlamp is perceived to be "better" because of the much higher level of foreground lighting (on the road immediately in front of the car). However, the beam patterns produced by this kind of "conversion" virtually always give less distance light, and often an alarming lack of light where there's meant to be a relative maximum in light intensity. The result is the illusion that you can see better than you actually can, and that's not safe.

It's tricky to judge headlamp beam performance without a lot of knowledge, a lot of training and a lot of special equipment, because subjective perceptions are very misleading. Having a lot of strong light in the foreground, that is on the road close to the car and out to the sides, is very comforting and reliably produces a strong impression of "good headlights". The problem is that not only is foreground lighting of decidedly secondary importance when travelling much above 30 mph, but having a very strong pool of light close to the car causes your pupils to close down, worsening your distance vision...all the while giving you this false sense of security. This is to say nothing of the massive amounts of glare to other road users and backdazzle to you, the driver, that results from these "retrofits".'

Not directed at you grey, but I would like to say good job to those who go down to personal attacks without coherently backing up your claims. I'm sure you'll see many benefits to installing the electric superchargers seen on eBay , the turbonator, slick-50, the tornado fuel saver, and other wonderful items on your car.

 

why would the same company (sylvania) rate their own headlights diffrent? Panasonic just curious?

 

Damn those babies look nice...thanks for posting them up.

 

I have the exact same setup as nycazn79. I used to run "optiblue" lights in 9004 size on my `87 Camry. Those were bluer than blue, and you paid the price when it rained. I quickly switched to Silverstars, and they made a big difference, and thus have used them in my `04 Corolla, and now my tC. I personally am satisfied with the silverstars, and I am planning on running MTEC or PIAA ion yellow 9006's for my OEM fogs.

I guess what it boils down to is this...personal preference. Nobody's setup is better than someone else's, so who cares? I'd entertain HID, but I'd rather not muck with it. It seems more troublesome than anything else, and I like to be able to see the road ahead, and not have an out of focus, blinding light beam emitted from my headlights, and I cannot guarantee to myself that I will always be driving on well-lit streets or highways.

 

Headlight bulbs aren't really high tech. There are only a few things you can change. The one that is the most important is the filament, the wire inside the bulb that actually emits light when voltage is applied. Most of the improvement in modern bulbs come from improvements in manufacturing technique. You can get a precise fitament of the bulb down to the fraction of a millimeter. This allows less light to be improperly reflected, making your headlights more efficient and ultimately brighter.

However, manufacturers can tweak the performance of the headlight bulb in a few ways. The easiest is to adjust the filament, e.g. the number of turns the wire is coiled. You can make a filament that outputs adequate levels of light, but life is very very long. This is good for people who don't really care how well the headlights light up as long as they work. You can adjust the filament so that it is brighter than a regular bulb, but that comes at the expense of life. This is good for people who want a brighter bulb who don't mind replacing their bulbs more often.

If you look at Sylvania's specifications on their automotive bulbs, you'll notice that they don't specifically mention the brightness differences between their bulbs in the product data tables. Let's take the 9006 bulb line up for example. Here is their data table (click)

You'll notice that their brightness rating (MSCD) is the same between all bulbs! How can this be? Well, all manufacturers are only required to have their bulbs meet the specific design specification of that particular bulb type within +/- 10 %. This is because there are variations with each bulb produced. However, you can group bulbs that are worse performing (-10%) with bulbs that are better performing (+10%) and still list them in the same class. That's kind of sneaky right there in my opinion. Unfortunately, all manufacturers can do it.

Thankfully, the rated life is specific and you can easily tell the differences between bulbs.

The problem I have with Silverstars are that they are in the lower performing group while marketing claims they are brighter than a stock bulb. In actuality, they are probably at or below what a regular stock bulb outputs.

If you want to run Silverstars, that's fine. However, do not claim that they are brighter than a normal bulb. You can't overcome the physical properties of a filter when comparing them to a clear bulb. If you check the link, the Silverstar (9006 ST) have the lowest rated life out of all the bulbs at only 150 hours compared to the norm of 1000. That is because the filament has to be driven so hard to overcome the effect of the filter to get to the legal requirement of -/+10% 80 MSCD. A regular bulb will last over 6 times as long as a Silverstar bulb. If you were cheap and you didn't want to replace your bulbs all too often, you can use a long life (9006 LL) bulb which lasts 10 times as long as a Silverstar.

On the other hand, a bulb such as the Xtravision (9006 XV) uses a slightly overdriven filament with a clear lens. Its output is brighter, but its life is reduced by 150 hours from the norm to 850. That is still quite acceptable for the increased brightness such a bulb provides. It still lasts over 5 times as long as Silverstars!

The best performing stock bulb for the tC is the Sylvania Xtravision. If you want to have the blue look to your headlights, you can get the Silverstars, but they will not be brighter and you will have to replace them much more often.

I am not trying to start a flame war here, but if you make claims as to which bulb is the brightest, you have to back it up with data. I hope this information can help you people out when you choose to replace your headlight bulbs.

 

Found on ebay:

JDM Xenon H4/9003 HID Headlight Bulb Scion XA XB TC

is that the right bulb?

 

The right bulb for the TC is a 9006/HB4 for low beam and 9005 for high beam.

 

thanks panasoanic. good post. I see your point. Are there any soft blue/white lights that are actually brighter than oem?

 

d00d, i so dont have the attention span to read this! haha

 

Unfortunately there aren't any out right now that will be brighter than a stock bulb. The stock bulb, if anyone is wondering, is just the plain vanilla Sylvania 9006.

The only way to get a well performing blue-white halogen bulb is to use a filter on something like a HIR1/HIR2 bulb. Those bulbs through out a lot more lumens than a 9006 so the effect of the filter won't be as pronounced as it would be on a 9006 bulb. The technology behind these bulbs is interesting. There is a coating on the bulb reflects infrared energy (heat) back into the center of the bulb, heating up the filament more and subsequently producing more light.

HIR1/HIR2 bulbs are a very niche item though. The only car that they come stock on is the Dodge Viper. The chances of the major lighting manufacturers making a blue-white type bulb in this specification is very very small.

You can retrofit HIR1/HIR2 bulbs for use on the tC if you are wondering. There is a post by another user who has actually done the retrofit if you search a bit. Although the HIR2 bulbs output much more light than a stock bulb, there are two things preventing them from glaring other drivers:

1) the tC headlight uses VOR as a cutoff point. That means that there is a sharp horizontal cutoff of light in the tC's headlight beam. If you turn on your headlights when near a wall, you'll see the cutoff pattern is like this: ___/

This reduces the chance of stray light from the headlight from entering in the opposite lane and glaring other drivers.

2) the tC headlight uses GE "Edge Glow" polycarbonate plastic for the outer headlight cover. If you look at the headlight from the side, you'll see that there is a faint blue tinge to it. That is because of the GE plastic and it is used as a cosemetic dress up item by Scion. Unfortunately, this plastic will filter out some of the light passing through it. There are a few different formulations of this plastic, so we can't tell for sure which one Toyota chose to use in their headlights. However, all of them reduce light output ranging from a 3.6% to 37.3% loss according to an SAE paper.

The light reduction of the tC's outer headlight cover will lessen the chance of glaring other people with HIR bulbs installed.

Here is a post with good information on performing the retrofit on a BMW:
http://forums.roadfly.org/forums/lig...3601688-6.html

 

Okay, here goes:

Silverstars, while they look nice, don't perform better than stock and most likely perform worse.

If you want to know why, you can read my post.

 

I wish an aftermarket co. comes out with a true Projector Headlight kit that's meant for HIDs.

 

thanks bro'

 

On ebay i found these XENON bulbs:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eB...spagename=WDVW

I dont know much about headlights.

A) Will these fit into the tc
B) Will these be brighter or any different then the stock?

thanks in advance for the info

 

I know what was posted about the test. This is how silverstars compare, light to meduim colored pavement these lights shine brighter and project further, meduim to black pavement regular headlights sine brighter up close but still the silverstar headlights project more light.

 

yeah during the day the silverstars are pretty yellow has anyone noticed how white the highs are there as good as the piaa gtx bulbs with the violet tint on them. if you want cheap silverstars go to walmart place a barcode from a mug over the barcode on teh bulbs and you got 88 cent silverstars that ring up sport mug lol suckers. this is just a sugestion i did not do this cough cough.