Honda Civic Headlights

[Doibugu2]

I have a '92 Civic and the headlights suck. Does anybody have any recomendations. And no, I am not sticking any baja lights on the front.

Thanks for the help.

[400exrules]

oh come on a civic was made for baja lights. lol

[quadman]

put some cool blue bulbs into them and they will be bright as ****

[Doibugu2]

do you know where i can get some?

[quadman]

i got some at autozone

[Sparks425Ex]

Any Auto Parts store:


Napa
AutoZone
Pep Boys


Only ones I can think of(off the top of my head) that have or can get you come.

[86atc250r]

Don't put the blue headlights in - while at the same time as being illegal, your headlights will perform worse..

Did anyone ever wonder why true HID's cost $1500 (or more) when you can get blue bulbs for $15?

Here's the truth...

To make normal halogen lamps have a blue tint, a filter is applied. This is the blue or silver tint you see on the bulb.

As some of us may know, white light is made up of all colors. Adding a blue filter does not magically increase the blue content of the bulb, it filters out the other colors to make the light's overall color appear more blue.

To compound things, a Halogen headlamp produces very little light in the blue area of the spectrum, so the filter has to be fairly powerful in eliminating the brightness of the other colors to get that blue tint.

Another problem is that blue is a shorter wavelength, which scatters and glares worse - which means you'll annoy other drivers and have trouble seeing in fog (ever wonder why good fog lights are yellow?), and rain.

I suppose the "blue headlamp" craze started with the introduction of HID lamps in high end luxury cars. HID lamps are a different technology - they do not have filaments and require a ballast to deliver the appropriate AC voltage to fire the bulb and maintain the arc. HID headlamps are very similar technology to the super bright metal halide lamps that are used to illuminate stadiums & such, the main difference being that they are required to produce usable light instantly and must hot-restart reliably.

Automotive HID bulbs put out roughly 3 times the actual lumens of light that a legal Halogen bulb does while at the same time, using less electricity. It also has more light content in the blue area of the spectrum (as well as having more toward the yellow end), which is the reason they appear to have a "purple" tint when compared to a normal Halogen bulb.

HID's require a specially designed lens to take advantage of this extra light output as well as their different "filament" position, so for good results you can't just retrofit existing headlamp lenses.

It's also not legal to use HID lamps in a lens designed for a Halogen bulb. HID's have special legal requirements for autoleveling systems, etc that make it difficult to make a legal retrofit "kit".

So, in short - there is no good, easy way to upgrade your headlamps in your Honda, unless you can find a HID lens and lamp conversion setup or a better lens/halogen lamp setup (there are excellent and poor examples of OEM halogen lamp setups, the 94 to around 2000 Toyota Celica's and Landcruiser's have awesome Halogen based headlamps) - but if you do, expect to shell out some serious $$$.

Don't waste your money or time on "specialty" lamps at the autoparts store - not only will you be lowering your headlamp's performance, you risk getting a ticket.

[Fender Bender]

wow, you really did your research

[250rmike]

accually you can go get some hyperwhites they come in a blue and crome package and the bulbs are blue or whatever other color you want. they will be bright. also are the plastic covers dirty cause you may need to either clean the inside of them or get new ones

yeah those hyperwhites DO increase your visibility even with stock lenses, trust me i have em, maybe in some cars they dont but in my camaro they do

[86atc250r]

A few things to consider if you are thinking about "hyperwhites".

If the bulb has a filter (coating), you are losing light, period.... It is impossible for a lamp to output more light with any kind of coating - think about it....

Higher wattage - These bulbs can pose several issues (including legality).

First of which - higher wattage bulbs do output more lumens of light typically - however, they also draw significantly more current thru wiring and switches that were designed to handle 55/60 watt loads. You can create a fire hazard pretty easily. You can add relays, but be sure you know what you are doing.

Higher wattage bulbs also develop significantly more heat, which can be a serious issue for plastic headlight housings and/or reflectors.

Good headlights are all about spreading available light around. If you take and put higher wattage lamps in, you are still running the same lens - this causes a few different things to occur...

First, hotspots. Since the lens will not be distributing the newly available light any better, you will have more light where you've already got plenty - while this may sound good at first, but lets look a little deeper. Since this "hot spot" is typically going to be right in front of you, your pupils will dialate equally, which means that areas of lower light will now be even less visible than they were before because your eye isn't letting as much in.

You may have a little more light spilling over to the outer boundries of your headlight's coverage area, but now that your eye's are adjusting to more light directly in front of them, you won't be able to use it.

This is especially a problem in cars like Camaro's with small headlamp lenses/reflectors.

Another problem is dazzle to oncoming drivers - while you may not care how your headlamps affect others, you may begin to care when you are "flashed" and/or pulled over more frequently.

Bulb life is also a problem, overwattage bulbs typically have a much shorter lifespan than a standard automotive bulb, so that expensive headlamp you just bought may only last a few to a few hundred hours.

Keep in mind that lamps that advertise to be putting out "HID" levels of light from a Halogen bulb are purely snake oil. If this were possible with "special" gasses like xenon, or "ion" bulbs, the manufacturers would have switched to them years ago and there would be no reason to even produce anything else.

Lamps that advertise to output 100w+ of light while only using 55w are also snake oil, you see a lot of this on eBay, it's a scam... That would mean that the lights are far more efficient than standard halogens - again, if this were currently possible, why would regular halogens still exist and be in use by auto manufacturers?

Lamps that advertise to be HID or HID equivelant but don't require ballasts are a scam.

If you must change your bulbs in search of better performance, Sylvania Xtravision (in the pink-and-black package), Philips High Visibility, Narva RangePower are the ones to look for. These don't have the blue filter and have a much higher liklihood of actually improving headlamp performance instead of making it worse.

Want to read and educate yourself more? Here's an article from the web about Hyperwhites - read and see if it makes sense to you....



SuperWhites/Hyperwhites/Ultrawhites

PIAA's wattage equivalence claims ("55w = 85w", etc.) are very misleading. They cannot be verified with proper laboratory equipment, and they CERTAINLY aren't true when compared with real overwattage bulbs on the road. Here's the full scoop!

CLAIM: PIAA "SuperWhite" bulbs produce 85W of light from 55W of electricity

REALITY: PIAA "Superwhite" bulbs produce exactly the same amount of light as any other bulb in a given bulb format (9004, 9005, 9006, H4, etc.), plus-or-minus 15 percent (which is the US FMVSS 108 Part 564 tolerance for variations in luminous intensity from headlamp bulbs).

The "55W = 85W" type claims are a sham. Here's how these kinds of pretend wattage numbers are cooked-up: The filaments in PIAA "Superwhite" bulbs are wound on a larger mandrel than regular filaments, so there are fewer filament coils, of a larger diameter. When these bulbs' luminous intensity is measured using the appropriate device (called an integrating sphere), they come up within the FMVSS 108 Part 564 tolerance range for whatever bulb type is being tested--no more. (If they didn't, they would not be permitted to be marked DOT, and they are, so they do.)

When a bulb with such a modified filament stack is placed in a headlamp, the different dimensions of the filament alter the beam pattern. In most US-specification headlamps, what this does is reduce the size of the central "hot spot" of the beam and put more light in it, while taking away light above, below, to the left and to the right of the hot spot. Then the PIAA marketeer comes up with his light meter, sticks it in the hot spot of the beam, and says "Nifty! The hot spot is almost as bright as it would be with an 85W bulb!" and rushes off to order-up a new batch of boxes festooned with "55W = 85W" banners. Then Mr. Consumer comes along, plunks-down some $70 (!!) for a pair of these bulbs, puts them in, and though his headlamps look "whiter", he has just screwed himself. How?

Well, the reason why many people find many US-specification headlamps in need of upgrading is because many US-spec headlamps have insufficient foreground light, which creates a "black hole" on the road in front of the car. There's often insufficient lateral light (left and right) to see critters or people before they run into the road. The "hot spot" creates a narrow tunnel of light that disappears "out there somewhere". By making the hot spot smaller, this narrow tunnel of light gets smaller. By taking away (already scarce) light from the foreground and sides, the situation is made worse.

CLAIM: PIAA "Superwhite" bulbs produce light that is whiter and brighter than regular bulbs.

REALITY: It is a mistaken notion that "whiter" and "yellower" qualities in the white light of a headlamp have any direct link to the amount or usability of the light. PIAA capitalizes on that mistaken notion to sell their bulbs. The "higher light color temperature" trumpeted by PIAA is created by a purplish-tinted glass bulb globe. It's not a dichroic coating like the "diamond blue" junk, but it is a tint, and as such physically must subtract from the available light. Remember, color temperature is independent of the amount of light, and there is absolutely *zero* evidence that light of a higher color temperature is better than light of a lower color temperature for driver performance at night. A 4-watt flashlight bulb dipped in the purple coating applied to Piaa "Superwhite" bulbs would look "whiter", but produce less light. And so it is with these headlamp bulbs.

People seem to have the notion that the eye is more sensitive to light of higher color temperature. This is probably as a result of claims made by car salesmen trying to sell HID headlamps more than anything else; it's false. The eye is not more sensitive to the blue cast created by the subject bulbs. There have been several studies done showing improved driver performance (due to improved vision at night) with headlamps of LOWER color temperature (less blue, more yellow). Color perception is much better under lower color temperatures (within the IEC "white" boundaries, of course), and the acuity of the human eye is really quite lousy under light colors that even begin to approach "blue".

CLAIM: "I've got pictures that prove the brightness difference!"

REALITY: You have proof of nothing. Not only can photographs not accurately record or represent the intensity of a lamp or beamcaster, but photos placed on the web are even less true to reality. At best, what you have is something of an illustration of the color difference between the regular bulb and the "Superwhite".

BOTTOM LINE: The laws of physics are the laws of physics. They don't bend even for PIAA's advertising department. There is no way to get "85 watts of light for 55 watts of electricity" unless the light meter you use happens to go spastic when hit with blue-tinted light. There is no seeing advantage to these "Superwhite" ("ultrawhite", "hyperwhite", etc.) bulbs, and quite often a disadvantage. They aren't as bad as the "ion blue" junk used by poseur kids who want to pretend they have HID headlamps, but they're not magical.

[own2424]

Xenon!

[trx440]

Gabe,
You never cease to amaze me. Did you get a 1600 on your SAT or what?
I haven't bumped into you on the forums in a while. Hope eveything is going well. Your bike looks sharp, I always had a soft spot for Tecates. Are you coming out to Glamis for FSW? Be nice to meet ya. -RT

[Glow Plug]

Here's an idear how about a new car lol civic's suck arse

[99_400EX]

get DENJI Projector headlights it is a complete unit that switches from one h4 bulb to i believe 9006 and 9005 bulbs the low beam projector will be 10X brighter than your high and low beams combined it will be monew well spent around $200 or so also a phillips HID system wouldnt be bad also....... and they arnt 1500 try $500

http://www.groupbuycenter.com/buy.aspx?id=7598

you don't need HIDS to be brighter than stock bulbs, Just buy projetors, they are brighter than stock, looks sweet, and aren't $1500. HIDS are sweet, I'm gettin HIDS for my truck. but I wouldn't spend $1000 to $1500 for light on an old civic. MY civic had projectors and I got flashed by other driver all the time

[Doibugu2]

Well Gabe, thanks for all the good info. I guess I will keep my crappy ones. Will have to check to see if the lens are dirty.

And for you, you clown: Brit220.

Find me another car that gets 40mph and has honda relibility. Yes, I could get a new car, but whats the point. I had a 99 f150, but when you drive 80 miles round trip to work, the gas will kill ya.

[250rmike]

dont you mean mpg(miles per gallon) not mph im sure i can find any car that get 40mph hahaha