My connectors were coated with something akin to dielectric grease. Some type of rust inhibitor / water prevention?

What are you looking for in terms of an upgrade? Swapping bulbs will give you a slight increase in output. Retrofit is the other end of the spectrum.

 

So I got these. Installed one. Not dark enough yet to test!


But on the back it says average lifespan ... 120 hours? Seriously? That does not seem like very long!

 

120 hours would last less than a year for me. But it would be a brighter year!

 

Exactly! Well it was a bit above the 120 mark, but even so it feels like somewhere above or below a year for most ppl -- we'll see I guess.

So my headlight (singular) is definitely brighter than my older bulb (also singular). Also, I've apparently been shining the left hand bulb into people's eyes for 6 years, just never noticed it - and nobody cared - because it was so dim!

Turned the adjustment screw down a few turns until I can find a time to figure out exactly how high to point it.

Fit headlights are so close to ground, you basically have to point them juuust under the horizon to have a hope of reaching far enough down the road. Any higher and you'll 1) miss the road and 2) you'll be helping blind the traffic headed towards your face.

 

Philips Vision Plus are very good bulb .

 

 

Clearly, I should have bought those.
Dad is concerned about heat in the light enclosure. Thoughts?

 

LOL. Is there a deeper pocket in the world for your lawyer to sue if these bulbs ruin your headlights and leave you driving in unsafe conditions? Just as a practical matter, the headlights on a FIT have more airflow than any other surface on the entire car, including the base of the windshield. Plenty to keep lights cool. You might also note that at the interface with the front hood there is actually a small gap on top of the headlight enclosures. Again, lots and lots of airflow over an extensive surface. I'm betting Phillips knows what its doing here.

Speaking of heat though, I noticed there are now LEDs for the FIT, and some on Amazon claiming 8,000 luments - out of 50 watts. The very best LEDs are only capable of making a bit over 100 Luments per watt, so that's pure BS. They do have cooling fans though, which tells me they're dramatically shortening the life of the LEDs, and pushing them very hard, which is why they create so much heat. LEDs make progressively more and more heat and less and less light with the power they consume as they are pushed past their "sweet spot", so these are just made cheap for stupid people who are making heat instead of light.

 

Eh... they count 8000 lumens for BOTH "bulbs," meaning ONE bulb is only 4000 lumens (it's goofy, but that's how "they" count it). In addition, it's NOT a single LED per bulb. The auxbeam I bought, which does advertise that 8k too, uses two LEDs for low beam and adds a 3rd LED when you use high beam. So, in that case, it comes down to not even 1333 lumens per LED. Even if we go back to the combined 4k lumens, it's down to 80 lumens per watt. Which is less than your 100 lumens per watt limit. At the minimum, other brands use two LEDs per bulb.

Talking about shorter life... that's exactly what Philips is doing with the xtreme vision bulbs (compared to their plain vision bulbs that "last" some 400 hrs). They put a film covering to make it appear more white, then make it run hotter to offset the film (as evident in their 67/60W labeling, factory is 60/55W). The only difference between them and knock off brands is that they can claim they are better at it.

 

on my GK i run the Phillips 9003 X-tremeVision bulbs..($29 on amazon)


i honestly couldnt tell much of a difference in illumination vs stock bulbs but it hasnt burned out since installing the pair in Dec17 so that is a good sign.

 

We've had the Philips Vision Plus ( up to 60 % gain ) in the FIT close to 2 years or a little longer . Find them to produce more whiter/ brighter light for better clarity at night and to give a longer / wider projection than the O.E. bulbs . Got them for under $15 at Home Depot as a clearance item . Would buy them again . They're available at PEPBOYS . Sometimes there's a mail in rebate .

 

Yup. Noticed that after my post, but at 80 Lumens per watt they're using old LEDs and pushing them really hard. If they used the very best that CREE makes they'd get a max of ~120 Lumens per watt, and if they backed off pushing them to the limit, the heat would be ~ 10%; so 4000/120 * 10%, or 3.4 watts of heat. It wouldn't even be warm to the touch. Alternatively, a 60W LED system, properly designed, should put out 120*60 - 7,200 Lumens per side. Where can I buy that?

As you can see from the table, at 2000Ma the luminous flux generated is only ~ 90% more than that generated at 1000mA, not 100% more. Furthermore, if you study the graphs you'll notice that to drive the device to 2000mA, more voltage is needed, so the mA alone doesn't indicate the actual wattage, which is somewhat more than 200% for 190% of the the power.

This well-designed bike light is using 2 bulbs to extract only 1,700 Lumens max, but even here if you multiply the Lumens generated by the time to get Lumen-hours, you'll see that the Med setting is the most efficient, extracting 5,100 Lumen-hours from the same battery pack that gets only 3,400 Lumen-hours at 1,700 Lumens. As an aside, my MetroPro 1100 uses ONE of the same bulbs to extract 1100 Lumens, but it eats a lot of power and makes a lot of heat relative to light at that setting.

The conclusion should be obvious, if they really wanted an efficient system they should ditch the $2 fan and use 4-5 state-of-the-art LED bulbs to get the claimed light. Those lights would last ~ 50,000 hours, not less than 10,000 when LEDs are pushed really hard and hot. In Alaska, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia that might be very much appreciated. In SoCal, not so much, but dealing with 3-4 watts of heat instead of 40-50 would. My alternator and engine would enjoy the light load as well.






The Xtreem bulbs are 3400K, and you don't need a film for that as Halogen lights are natively that color. They're making more light by generating more heat with a hotter filament. If you look closely at the pics you can see the filament designs are completely different. At any rate, the life is at least 75% of their standard bulbs, so not a big deal.

I would be willing to try an LED headlight set IF they were ~4000K, but 6000K performs poorly when driven on asphalt, which is where most of my night driving is. Been there, done that.

 

one thing ive found with aftermarket halogens, the brighter they are the faster they seem to burn out (or dim out). so if u can find the brightness using other technology like LED, that might be worth a try.

 

Just got a pair from Amazon, BUT, they're marked for what looks like 200 hours, not 300, not a pleasant surprise....

PS:
Took a short drive, not that it's dark. These do provide significantly more light, especially on blacktop, than my OEM lights, especially the low beams, which create a very reassuring pool of homogeneous light for 200ft or so in front of the vehicle.

Going over a speed bump with the back wheels elevated I was able to observe the aim-point on the street of the high beams. They do tend towards convergence, just as the diagram on the packaging indicates. I'm guessing that point is ~ 250 yards, perhaps a bit more. Obviously you can adjust that, but that's the result for my stock ride. The high beams really reach out. They light Dot Bots and reflective traffic signs for at least a half mile on dark roads. For me at least, these make a big difference in my comfort level with night driving long distances.