Headlight Bulbs

[Ian Simmonds]

This is just a general observation rather than S2 specific, but so far this year we've changed 1 headlight bulb on the Ur quattro, 1 on the S2 and 2 on the Land Rover. On the trip to Wales we blew another on on the Land Rover. We now carry spares, so a quick swap sorted the issue...

Now I know what you are thinking, cheap '*****' Halford specials, but no... We've only ever fitted the best
Bosch or Philips options...

Is anyone else suffering from 'p|ss poor' headlight Bulbs or are the special 'crap' ones all saved up for me? Surely they've got to be good for more than 1500 miles or 6 month's worth of driving?

Yours, in the dark...
Ian

[mcandmar]

Oh i could rant. I replaced my main beam and fogs with Osram Silverstar bulbs as they are a little brighter and whiter. They do cost a bit being "Premium" bulbs, but after six months i have had three failures like this

[3db]

Osram Nightbreakers in the main and dipped beam and some random el cheapo's in fogs, all H1 bulbs. More than a year running with no issues.

[BLAMM0]

I personally use Philips Blue Vision, haven't yet had any problems with them.

[Siim89]

Osram Nightbraker on my urS4 for 3 years - 45k km already and about half of it they have been shining in front, not a single problem. C5 has had them for 60k when 1 of them fails. Bmw e46 daily has had them for 20k, but I mainly use foglights is daytime on that.
Haven't had a better legal bulb in Estonia than this.

[Tonybolony]

Bmw e46 daily has had them for 20k, but I mainly use foglights is daytime on that.


A Beemer with fogs on during daytime?? Surely not

[sidrick]

Another vote for Nightbreakers

[AndyP]

If anybody needs new bulbs, Euro Car Parts have 30% off this weekend, use code , I just picked up some H1 Philips Xtreme vision Plus for £16.50

[M_GORDON]

Better value and not expensive:

Osram NightBreaker UNLIMITED


No more...

[steve briance]

I've got silver star bulbs in my car, i bought a set of silver star a few years back in the pursuit of a bit more light, imagine my surprise when the old bulbs were the same! Interesting to hear about the bad luck some people have had with bulbs... I've had my car over 14 years now and only changed one fog light bulb! This seems out of the ordinary but i am wondering whether the volts at the bulb are low. I've been thinking this for some time and have some bits ready to do a relay upgrade at some point. You can put whatever bulb you want in but it wont work properly if it is only getting 11volts! I did a relay upgrade on an old scirroco i had and that made a big difference but that was easy as there was so much space under the bonnet!

[Tonybolony]

This is just a general observation rather than S2 specific, but so far this year we've changed 1 headlight bulb on the Ur quattro, 1 on the S2 and 2 on the Land Rover. On the trip to Wales we blew another on on the Land Rover. We now carry spares, so a quick swap sorted the issue...

Now I know what you are thinking, cheap '*****' Halford specials, but no... We've only ever fitted the best
Bosch or Philips options...

Is anyone else suffering from 'p|ss poor' headlight Bulbs or are the special 'crap' ones all saved up for me? Surely they've got to be good for more than 1500 miles or 6 month's worth of driving?

Yours, in the dark...
Ian

A bit of a long shot, Ian, but as you say 3 lamps have popped in the Land-rover lately- I'd be tempted to meter the alternator voltage....
A '12v' system would normally have an alternator reading of 14.4v
Worth checking out.

On the subject; several years ago I was asking a lighting manufacturers' rep about the longevity of domestic lamps (way before LED's started taking over ), and he said that if you were able to reduce the voltage available to your house, then by doing so by only 5%, would roughly double the life of the lamps because they were being manufactured to produce the absolute maximum amount of lumens for the rated voltage.(To the point that if you lived in a small village close to it's sub-station, then you probably would change lamps far more often than those in a property on the outskirts, who maybe would suffer a slight voltage drop to their premises. The allowable voltage drop is from memory 6v (2.5%) on a single phase installation, and this could make a real difference to lamp longevity) Obviously the hotter a filament lamp burns- the greater the light output, up to the point of melting the filament. With the tight tolerances that these things run at (and is a 12v car lamp any different in principle?), even if the alternator regulator voltage on your vehicle was only a few percent above where it should be could potentially decimate the lamp's life.

Just a thought....

[mcandmar]

On the subject; several years ago I was asking a lighting manufacturers' rep about the longevity of domestic lamps (way before LED's started taking over ), and he said that if you were able to reduce the voltage available to your house, then by doing so by only 5%, would roughly double the life of the lamps because they were being manufactured to produce the absolute maximum amount of lumens for the rated voltage.(To the point that if you lived in a small village close to it's sub-station, then you probably would change lamps far more often than those in a property on the outskirts, who maybe would suffer a slight voltage drop to their premises. The allowable voltage drop is from memory 6v (2.5%) on a single phase installation, and this could make a real difference to lamp longevity) Obviously the hotter a filament lamp burns- the greater the light output, up to the point of melting the filament. With the tight tolerances that these things run at (and is a 12v car lamp any different in principle?), even if the alternator regulator voltage on your vehicle was only a few percent above where it should be could potentially decimate the lamp's life.

Just a thought....

Absolutely true, and a common trick to improve the life time of vacuum tubes in amplifiers is to run the heater filaments at a lower voltage than rated, the same also applies to light bulbs in cars.

[psiconauta911]

Car runing for 17 years with the original light bulbs a 0 failures, changed the front lights 5 years ago and bought new bulbs from the Audi dealer, quite cheap and no problems so far!

Had a renault new some 5 years ago and the dipped beam lamp only lasted 1.5 years!!!