arnieosp

iTrader: (1)

Both of my Lexuses (08 GS350 and 08 RX350) have factory HID lights on low beams and halogen on highs. For a while, I've been trying to improve the performance of the high beam. I started with installing Nokya 100W light 9005 bulbs. The light output seemed to be better when the car was parked against the garage door with high beam on, but on the road it did not make any difference. In addition, I did not want to take any chances of melting the plastic light housing, so I went on to another option.....

..... which was purchasing and installing Xentec HID conversion kit. It was easy plug-and play job, and the kit was fairly inexpencive, around $50. The bulbs I picked originally, were 6000k. They looked great, but in terms of visibility, because of the blueish color, they were worse then the OEM halogen. So, I replaced the bulbs with 4300k. These bulbs were really good, excellent light output, color matched Lexus HID low beams. However, they would take about 10 seconds to "warm up" after you switch the highs on. In other words, they were not practicable for the high beams, so I started researching.....

....the LED bulbs. Nowdays you can find 9005 120-LED bulbs on e-bay. I talked a guy from Toyotanation that had those on his Camry. He told me that they looked cool, were coming on full-blast instantly, but the real-life performance just wasn't there. They simply did not light the road far enough. I decided to save $30 and not to even try them. Then I learned aboout......

..... Toshiba/Phillips HIR bulbs. People at BMW forum spoke very highly of them. I decided to give it a shot and ordered a pair of Phillips HIR bulbs from Max of http://www.finemotoring.com/ Since he is only about 250 miles away, I got the bulbs on the third day after placing my order. Naturally, I plugged them in, parked the car against my garave door and turned them on. At first I was dissappointed, because I expected my high beam light to set my garage door on fire, and it did not happen. As the matter of fact, I could barely tell the difference from OEM. So, I e-mailed Max, the guy who I bought the bulbs from, and he sent me a set of Toshiba HIR bulbs to experiment with. Again, I got them in 3 days.

However, by now I had an opportunity to drive on dark rural roads and that's where the HIR lights literally shine. First I drive my GS with stock lights, then with Phillips, then with Toshibas. I tried taking pictures, but it was pointless, the camera could not capture the "depth" of the beam of light.

In my opinion, the HIR bulbs, both Phillips and Toshiba, are clearly brighter and produce wider and "richer" light beam then the OEM. I personally like Toshiba better then Phillips for the following reasons:

1. Toshiba is a little whiter in color, closer to factory HID lights.
2. Toshiba's light is wider, and it seems to penetrate darkness deeper and farther then Phillips.

When I installed Phillips after the OEMs, no light level adjustment was necessary, but when Toshibas were installed, they were aimed a little higher and I had to re-aim them lower. I assume, it was because of the different shape of the bulb.

By the way, according to my friends from Russian Lexus forum, the HIR light bulbs are standard on high beams of RX and GS sold in Europe.

THE BOTTOM LINE: If you are after "the look" and want to have blueish-colored high beam with great light penetration, and don't mind waiting about 10 seconds the the light to show up, got for the HID kit.

If you don't care much about the color of your high beams, and want to have light intensity similar to HID, but instantly on demand, give the HIR bulbs serious consideration. I love my Toshibas, it's almost like having your personal Sun shining for you.

Again, I highly recomend Max, here is his website: http://www.finemotoring.com/

The top picture has Phillips HIR1 9011 bulb, and the bottom is Toshiba HIR1 9011 bulb.

infinirx

Anymore pics in action?

arnieosp

iTrader: (1)

I tried taking pictures, but it is impossible to do, at least with my camera. How do you take a picture of the night highway lit up by the light?

infinirx

Just park your car by a wall, like a garage door (white) and turn on the lights Might be good in you had a caparison

The site has two pics. One is zoomed in. Not a great example.

arnieosp

iTrader: (1)

Okay, here it is. Left headlight has HIR bulb, right side is OEM bulb. You see the high beams only, low beams were covered with towels. You can hardly tell the difference in this picture. As I said, once you take the car out to some dark road and turn the high beams on, you'll see how much brighter they are.

arnieosp

iTrader: (1)

Same thing, with low beams not covered.

infinirx

Cool I see what they are good for now. Ok so it's for distance. Great thanks!!

lexus114

The only thing is,I never use my high beams during the summer. I attract every friggin bug in Northampton County. Stupid insects.

infinirx

I wonder how they are compared to the highest end Sylvania?

veleno

iTrader: (3)

Since I hardly ever turn on my high beams, I'm more concerned about how it looks for the DRL. Is it still yellowish like OEM or pure white like HID? I'd get them for that reason only.

mowmow

I have PIAA extreme white 9005 for my high beam, as DRL because of the voltage regulation, it's just yellowish like OEM but once I use High beam, it's a very bright whitish
wide beam.

Now arnieosp why did you choose Nokya bulb your first choice and not others like PIAA or Sylvania Ultra ? that gives a much better and brighter visibility. You understand high beam are aim different from your low beam, it's aimed at a higher angle so on the road you see a wider and overall picture of the surrounding.

If you want to see better on the road, you need to get a retrofit done with bixeon projectors so you have 4 projectors aiming on the road while you drive so big improvement on visibility on the road and once you hit high beam, the reflector within the bixeon will project the light to a higher level.

As for your 10 second delay issue, did you have a relay harness kit install along with your HID kit ? That may be your problem.

you can still get the cool blueish hue on hid projector without going higher temperature and scrafice visibility. My first retrofit done by a good friend and high end professional retorfitter, he is using 4300K on the Valeo ( audi ) projector and yet still able to produce a blueish hue on the cutoff line ( see the retrofit write up on my signature )

arnieosp

iTrader: (1)

It's still yellowish. As I stated in my original post, those bulbs are not for looks, they are for visibility. BTW, my DRLs are turned off.

arnieosp

iTrader: (1)

I did a lot of research and found a lot of bad reviews on Sylvanias. I understand they don't last log and are quite expensive. I looked into PIAA, but for a little more money I wanted to try something more sophisticated.

I did not want to go through a complicated and expensive process of building a headlight system with 4 projectors. I wanted something simple, plug-and-play type.

My HID kit did not require any harnesses, because it only draws 35 watts. The warm-up delay is a problem for pretty much all aftermarket kits, that's why most of the vendors do not recomend them for high beams.