I don't find myself using the driving lights very often on my Aviator, but every time I do, I find myself disappointed at the drastic difference between the color temperature of the stock HID headlights and the driving lights. My search of this forum and the Internet has not revealed anything that tells me what the stock color temperature of the headlights is so that I can match the driving lights to them.

Does anyone know what the stock HID color temperature is, or where I can find such information?

-Rod

 

Well, apparently the commercials are true, "there's an app for that." I searched the Android Market for "color temperature" and found an app in the Photography tools section that let me take photos with the phone and it converted the photo information to color temperature. I tried it out first with the garage lights that I knew the approximate color temperature of and it was quite close (probably at least as accurate as the label on the bulb box). So then I used a white piece of cardboard in front of the lights and snapped several photos. Probably 95% of the photos were closer to 6500K than 4300K for the HID headlights, with 2 of the 6 or so photos measuring right at 6500K. I then used the same process to measure the color temperature of the fog lights, they came up at 2500K. I suspect that's a bit low, but it does suggest there's a drastic difference in color between the HIDs and the fogs.

It looks like I'm now on the hunt for 9140 or 9145 bulbs with a color temperature of something close to 6500k. I don't really want to go with HIDs or LEDs, and I don't use the lights enough to be too concerned with the extra power dissipation from the 9145 bulbs.

-Rod

 

Well, I ended up going with some LED bulbs for the fog lights. The application for my phone seems pretty accurate. I bought some 6500K bulbs and they definitely match the HID headlights better than the stock 9140 bulbs.

Just the fog lights on, new LED bulb on right, stock 9140 on left.


With the headlights on, still with LED bulb only on the right.


These LED bulbs are surprisingly bright, I'm quite impressed.

-Rod

 

shorod, you don't happen to still have the info on your 65K LED's do you? I'd like to replace the fog light bulds on my 05 to match the factory HID's. What about the high beam's ? I did "some" reading on the factory HID's that need replaced as a unit rather than just a bulb.... wonder what they cost?

 

You are going about this wrong, replace the stock 6500k headlights with 4300K or 4500K headlights. They are brighter, help you see better and farther, last longer, and are better in every way.

 

I have absolutely no complaints with how well I can see with the stock HIDs, and because of that, I almost never use the high beams so I didn't bother changing out the high beam bulbs. I don't remember for sure, but I've done a fair amount of business with iJDMtoy.com for LED bulbs so I think that's where I got these. I think they were the 68 LED version but don't remember that detail.

I've since converted all the running lights, tail lights, and interior lights over the LEDs as well and my wife has not run the battery dead since when camping. She has a tendency to leave the liftgate open and a couple of times ran the battery dead in the campground previously.

-Rod