I shouldn't say this (My mother and step dad work at Sylvania) I never had good luck with Silver Stars. They always burn out after a month......in my case.

 

Thanks Kingranch..... I know they make the regular Silverstars in an H13 bulb but there is another step up from these called Siverstar "Ultras" which is what I put in my wifes Toyota. They are by far the brightest halogen bulbs I have ever seen but the unfortunate thing about them is that they only seem to last about a year... sometimes less and they come with a pretty hefty price tag for a bulb with a lifespan that short.

 

Yes the SilverStar zXe but i wouldnt expect em to last any longer & a hefty tag comes standard, Sylvania really needs to increase lifespan or decrease price.
I guess mine last so long only cause i dont drive the truck much, if i was driving & burning out bulbs consistently i would look to other options.

 

One thing I did not see in the post so far was talk about lamp color.
The guys that are running with the blue 8K HID will see less that the guy
running with the 4300K, The human eye will pick up the yellow color
much better than the blue.
I replaced my Fog lamps on my Ranger with the 3000 K HID lamps
and it really made the road lines stand out. If I were in your place I
would also do that with the fog lights even if you only used yellow
incandescent lamps.
This is what I did to my F350 4300 K 55W headlights and 3000 K 35 W for the fog.

On some other small things there is a max legal wattage for street use.
If I recall right it is 55/65 watt low/high.
With that said I had an 88 Ranger that I had 85/125 Hella lamp assembles
with the Hella H4 lamps in and I had to run relays because I would other
wise burn up the switches and stress the harness. To be nice they were
pointed down at the ground and really lit things up. The high were almost
never used on the street. Out camping they cam in really handy at night.

My HID's at night Hi beam with fog

Low beam only 4300 K @55 Watt


Sean

 

Here is my old 87 Ranger that I added headlight relays.... makes a huge difference.

BEFORE



AFTER



Josh

 

You know I miss that little truck.
Was the first one I owned and got paid-off
before selling it.
The 85/125 were so bright I could drive in on high
bean and turn off the next door neighbors yard lights.

Sean

 

Must be why the 2500k Yellow Xenon bulbs we run in our Fog lamps work so well, even on wet asphalt that yellow is visible & its not reflective when its snowing. A great addition to any headlight setup IMO.
Note: You can even pick out the yellow color in "Yahiko's" 1st photo w/HID's on High beam

 

Okay... so can someone explain to me exactly how headlight relays work and how to wire them? Is there some way for me to set things up where I can keep my low beams on when I switch to high? To me this would be VERY helpful, as my low beams are actually pretty bright, but they're short range. My high beams are very dispersed and throws exceptionally little light directly in front of the truck, creating a "blind spot" that makes me feel uneasy.

As for the xenons, I plan to remove them as quickly as possible. I had to turn my lights on and off (and walk to the front of the truck and back) ***SEVEN*** times this morning for both of them to light up. That is just ridiculous. I messaged the eBay seller when I had the problem with one, and they told me to switch ballasts with the other side, and then try the capacitors and so-on to "nail down" the problem. Well, now that both headlights are doing it I requested a refund for the whole setup, and they have yet to reply. It would have been considerate of them to just say, "This is what happens with most xenon lights". Glad I posted on here and found out that this is typical behavior for xenon lights.

 

And "that" is exactly the reason I am not rushing out to by an HID kit!

 

Your talkin about a HID kit i assume, xenon is just a gas that is even put into higher quality standard bulbs.
But this is another example of why i dont have HIDs yet even though i love how they look....Damn

 

Can anyone tell me if some car manufacturers use xenon (HID) lights from the factory? It seems that I've heard this from a few sources, and if it's true, then they must have solved the inconsistent lighting issue. I know that more money can be put into such things from a R&D standpoint with a car manufacturer, but seriously--how long would that take to trickle down to the aftermarket venue? Then again, maybe no one uses them.

Can anyone say anything about digital ballasts? When browsing eBay I saw a few sellers that touted "digital ballasts" for their HID kits. Does this alleviate some of these issues? As you can tell, I know next to nothing about HID kits--it was just recommended to me as a solution for my dim headlights. I decided to do away with my typical "research like mad" philosophy before my purchase, and it really came back to bite me.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Been reading up on relays--very simple in principal... how difficult to use in real life? My headlights, being H13's, have three connectors. Are these high, low and ground? What would be the optimal way to wire these in with a relay? Have the "trigger" side of the relay spliced into the parking light wire to use for low beams, so they always come on with the parking lights and stay on with the high beams activated? And then splice a relay into the high beam wire and the main wire feeding the high beam side of the H13? This way, both beams get full voltage, and the low beams stay on with the high beams? What about ground? Do I need a better ground than the wire that currently runs to the H13? Lastly, should I do relays for each headlight side? (one for low beam, one for high beam on each side, for a total of 4?) After all, I have a battery on each side under the hood.

 

Both of mine are digital. They tend to make less noise on the AM band.
Some of the older cheep ballasts made it so you could not listen to AM with the
lights on. In other words you could not listed to Art Bell at night BTW Art is better than
George Noory in my opinion.
Xenon is the gas that they use in HIDs You could use some thing else.
But the color would change and the output may not be as stable.
Here is a fact that most don't know. You local movie theater's
projectors use this type of system but in LONG arc format.
The problem we see with a lamp not lighting is do to lower quality
parts used in the ballasts. It all gets down to the money you want to spend
The reflector that you use does make a difference. For example the one
at the movie theater is more like the large end of an egg that makes
is so it will gather all the light better and send it out in a beam. The wattage
is in the 2000 Watt range to 5000 Watt for where I worked when I was younger.
No idea what things are like now with the new digital units. I hear that they
still use the same lamp housing. Anyway I am going here.
The answer is yes they could build a ballast that would work right 100%
of the time but do you want to spend $300-$500 for each ballast?
And you really don't need the bi-xeon I really don't use my high
beams that much now. So you or I could do with the single level lamps.
One other thing the movie theater ones have an auto start that also
has a re-strike option that will keep trying to light the lamp until
it is lit up. So adding some type of lamp feedback would help to
solve the problem.
And to answer the other question I think that almost all auto manufacturers
offer some model with HID options. I just withed that the F-series had them.

Sean

 

Thanks for the reply, Yahiko!

Okay-an update on my HID lights. I spent an hour or so this morning reading articles on HID lighting problems, and most of them revolved around voltage. This started to light that dim little lightbulb in my head (it has long gone from xenon to an incandescent, under-volted bulb). When I installed the xenon lights they lit 100% of the time. Both of them. The difference? I turned them on *before* or *without* cranking the engine. Reading up on the voltage (added to what you guys have posted) made me come to the realization that I must have a voltage drop in the line running to my headlights, and this is what is causing my lights to be temperamental.

So... I wrote back to the folks I bought my HID's from, and sure enough, there was supposed to be a relay that connects the lights directly to the battery for proper operation. Once I get the relay in and hook it up, I'll see if that fixes the problem. I'll be sure and post back here with my results.

Kind-of off topic, but what about wiring up a series connection with both batteries (creating 24'ish volts) for the main line to the bulbs, then stepping it down to 13/14 volts or so? How much can you overvolt the 12v bulbs before drastically shortening their life? I assume ramping up the voltage would make them noticeably brighter.

 

At about 15 Volts they really go fast. I popped a set of
H4 lamps on my Ranger with a stuck regulator it was up
to 17 Volts when they went poof.
Wiring the batteries up to give you 24~28 VDC and then
dropping it back to 12~14 VDC will be a waste of time and energy.
It would make better use to take some 12 Ga copper wire to a relay
and from there to the lamp. This way you have less voltage drop.
And use the factory wire as the control signal for the relay.
Also make sure that you use the same size wire for the ground.

Sean
Sean

 

Check my post out here...Spyder HID Projector Install with Lexus Projector retrofit