The ultimate headlight upgrade H4 (not LED or HID)

I respectfully disagree with you here. HID and xenon are "the same" only in that both bulb types are filled with xenon gas. Beyond that, the technologies are very different. HID bulbs don't contain a filament, instead relying on the gas discharge principal, in which an arc of light is created between two electrodes inside a glass capsule, which is filled with Xenon gas. Xenon-gas filled bulbs are more "traditional" lightbulbs, containing tungsten filaments that get hot, surrounded by (inert) xenon gas that keeps them burning brightly without burning up.

I'm sure there are fly-by-night, frequently Chinese-manufactured, junk bulbs that use deceptive advertising language like "xenon white" or "xenon colored," but I don't think any of those are recommended in this thread.

 

Ignore the term Xenon. Lights are either HID or Halogen in this case and are fundamentally very different. HIDs create a very high voltage electrical arc across a gas capsule to create light. A halogen bulb heats a tungsten filament inside a halogen gas capsule till it glows to create light. If you replace the halogen gas in the halogen bulb with far more expensive Xenon gas (like the Tungsram Nighthawk Xenons), the light created is slightly brighter and whiter, but it is still a "halogen" technology bulb as it is heating a tungsten filament. It doesn't use high voltage requiring external ballasts and is not arcing an electrical current across a gas capsule to generate light. Many companies add to the confusion by calling their products "Xenon" based on the color temp of the output, and not the technology used, typically where a halogen bulb will get a heavy performance robbing blue coating to closer match the color output of HID, so it "looks like HID" even though it isn't. Definitely steer clear of those products.

What 75/70w H4s did you find?

 

GP Thunder has the 75/70w & the ones I'm trying are EVO Formance Spectras # 93353 75/65w. I'm not wanting anything brighter on Lo anyway. Ad says uses 75w of power to produce 100w of light (surely they wouldn't deceive us). For $14 just thought I'd give them a try. I eventually may try the Racing Vision +200, I like the extra life & am wondering if you could even notice the difference in them & the +150, (3.71 vs 3.61). Just wondering if I've got this right, if I do go to the +200 & can see a difference over my OEM, if I then get a wiring harness installed I'll see another pretty noticeable increase? Thanks "crash" for all you've done

 

Ordered the HeadlightService harness and the OSRAM bulbs to do this upgrade.

 

I was trying to make it simple to understand. HID is a xenon filled capsule, yes. Xenon and HID are used interchangeably as descriptions and is accurate. Hence why PowerBulbs tab for HID bulbs is labeled "Xenon HID Bulbs".

What I was trying to state is that some halogen manufactures use "xenon" in their description as a description for color to make it more appealing. Like as a key word like many LED bulbs use ridiculous claims of 10 million lumens. haha I suppose I wasn't as clear as I intended, my bad.

 

Ouch. Those bulbs list a 6000k color temp, the extra 10w in power is going to be insufficient to overcome the catastrophic losses of a 6000k filter on a halogen bulb, they will be whiter but lower output than stock. If you really wanted to go the white higher wattage halogen route, Osram makes the 5000k 100/90w Cool Blue Boost bulbs. It is not a product I would recommend, but will have much lower losses than a 6000k halogen while also having higher raw output, which should result in significantly better performance than the GP bulb you list. Granted the Osram's will require a harness. But any bulb coating reduces output, so I'd highly recommend the SuperBrights over the Cool Blue Boost.

 

Really wasn't expecting much from the $14, 75/60, just figured I'd give them a try. I thought what I was wanting would be simple, my Lo is perfectly fine the way it is. I'd just like to see a little better & farther on Hi. White, blue, amber, 4000k, 8000k, 22,000K, LED, HID, Xenon makes no difference. I know I remember, back around 1980, we would just plug a 100/55 or 100/65 in our motorcycles & all was good, no extra wiring or nothing, just plug & play. Very noticeable difference, could see waaay better on HI, & low was like it always was, didn't blind anyone. It seems those simple times are gone. May just keep what I've got. Or I may try the Philips Racing Vision + 200. Just wondering, as there's so much talk about the HD wiring harness, if I just installed a HD wiring harness, would it make my OEM lights any better? Thanks for the info.

 

Yes. The harness will eliminate the voltage drop in the original wiring. Somewhere around a 15% (IIRC) improvement in light output with just the harness.

 

Just chiming in to say I ordered my second set of Osram super bright premium 100/90w bulbs, one of my bulbs just burned out after almost exactly 2 years with lots of offroad miles and 2 PNW winters with only 8 hours of light per day. 2 year life is pretty damn good IMO. Love my ultimate headlight upgrade

 

That's great service life! I ordered 2 sets per vehicle to avoid having to wait for new ones. No down time and they're cheap enough to do so.

 

There's a LOT of discussion (including some that may be a little confusing and even contradictory as different opinions have been registered) throughout this thread's 185 pages. As I said previously, make it easy on yourself and focus on Page 1, Post 1. There are three basic paths available...

First, you can do nothing and stick with stock harness and bulbs.

Second, you can upgrade to higher output stock wattage bulbs.

Third, you can upgrade your harness, permitting use of higher wattage bulbs.

 

Unfortunately there are not any good options to increase high beam performance without the harness. The 75/65 Osram Hypers would have been an ideal bulb for your use, but are no longer available. Bulbs like the Philips Racing Vision have improved low beam, but the high beam is coated and worse than stock. Since you are looking for better high beam performance that wouldn't fit what you are looking for either. The best stock wattage performance bulb without a coated high beam is the Tungsram Nighthawk Xenon +120. It isn't going to give you significant high beam gains though.

The harness will benefit both high and low beam, and boost output of any halogen bulbs. It also opens up options to high wattage bulbs which are where the high beam performance will really benefit. There are 100/55w bulbs available that will have a stock low beam and substantial increase in high beam. The problem without using a harness is that the high wattage may melt your plastic connectors and the bulbs will have insufficient voltage to really perform, so you won't see the true benefit of using the higher power bulbs.

 

I noticed the same thing with the Philips Racing Visions. Low beam performance was great but the High beam was meh. I think the High beam was maybe equal to stock H4 bulbs to me.

For me since I didn't do a harness upgrade the biggest jump I noted was when I added my AGM battery and increased charging voltage. I never measured voltage drop but it probably puts similar voltage at the bulb connector as doing an upgraded harness with stock charging voltage. So I think @rphillips would likely be quite happy with a harness alone. But adding better bulbs whether it's stock wattage (55w/65w) or higher wattage bulbs.

FWIW, (@rphillips, this is a reference about coatings on the bulbs, how they affect output and not applicable to the H4 bulb in yours). I do remember experiencing (though never measured) the Osram CBB/Cool Blue Boost while in my buddies 3rd gen. It is a 75w H9 and hardly performed better than an H11 55w, he went to Philips H9 after that and improved output significantly. Simply put, all I am saying for anyone somewhat confused about coatings on bulbs is that this shows how detrimental the coating can be for a bulb. Note that it takes an extra 20w (28% more wattage) to overcome the coatings deficiencies and Osram is quality manufacture, not overrated chinese bulbs.

 

How much does a higher voltage AGM improve light output, with and without a harness?

 

The voltage booster is good for +0.5v and the harness +0.3v IIRC, so the booster is more effective in boosting output but not a replacement for a harness in running high wattage bulbs.

 

My harness should be here Monday. Any tips/tricks to install it? Is it pretty straightforward?

 

It's pretty straightforward, and the instructions are thorough.

 

Just curious how much the blue coating generally reduces output on a bulb? 10%??? I have both the SuperBrights and the Cool Blue Boost 100/90W bulbs but no way to do a accurate, scientific comparison.

 

The darker the blue coating to achieve a higher color temp whiter light on a halogen, the greater the losses. In halogen losses 4000k<5000k<6000k. But I haven’t done any measured comparisons with bulbs like cool blue boost to say exactly what the percentage loss is. I try to spend my limited time highlighting products that work and perform best (or at least have promising designs) vs showing why products perform poorly.

 

An incandescent source only produces about 15% of its visible light output in the blue-indigo-violet range. The coating has to block a fairly substantial amount of red and green wavelengths in order to start raising color temperature/shifting it visibly more blue. These are also the two wavelengths our eyes are more capable of perceiving things with - this is the positive reason for selective yellow lights, which the French required for a long period, in foul weather/extended night driving. There's a lot to be gained by filtering out a relatively insignificant amount of total light, which are also the least useful wavelengths to see things with in the dark -and- these blue wavelengths potentially cause some decrease in sensitivity/downregulation to the red and green rods and cones of the eye.

There's not much, if anything, to be gained by filtering out a signficant amount of red and green to make an incandescent appear much higher in color temp.

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As it stands, probably the easiest way for Crash to see how much the blue is reduc output would be to test the poeer draw and intensity of a bulb with a blue coating, then strip the coating with as little damage to the bulb envelope as possible (assuming its an external coating), then repeat the test and measure the difference in intensity. As different bulbs have varying amounts of blue tint, it wouldn't be as simple as testing one bulb. But he could do this with a cheap bulb with a heavy blue coating, and something like a philips xtremevision +150 and give some ball parks for a range.

But he's a busy guy, and that would be a waste of bulbs and time.