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 PIAA's? Silverstars? Xenon? Blue spray paint and a 10-million-candlepower spotlight? Whats the best light bulb?
Unfortunately I didn't get it right the first time and blew about 60 bucks in the process. Maybe this section will help save you a few dollars so you can buy yourself a set of floormats or something.
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Lets put the good part up in front... My Conclusions:
They are the next best thing to proper HIDs, if not better. Given their 'cooler' temp compared to most ultra-white or bluish HIDs (whiter light isn't necessarily better for visibility) they may even be better.
Certainly they cost only a fraction of what an HID kit does. They are DOT-legal in a Dodge Magnum light housing. Their light element is optimized for designed-for-halogen housings. They do not suffer from longevity issues like over-driven, blue-painted halogen bulbs. The Dodge Magnum light housing has an excellent 'cutoff' that allows these lights to be safely used against oncoming traffic.
They are freakin’ bright but not too bright. Thats also worth pointing out. In the months since I bought and installed the bulbs I have never been flashed by anyone and -- given the bulbs' brightness -- I find I almost never use my hi-beams anymore on country roads... but if I do: *whammo*
An aside that you can take for what its worth: I really like the fact that my stock hi-beam bulbs -- which are otherwise useless after replacement with HIR's -- fit into my Magnum's fog lights just fine. The extra 12 watts down there isn’t enough to melt or even overheat anything and it turns them -- despite the extremely conservative stock focus, which I haven’t fooled with -- into a great way to superlight the road immediately in front of me (I only use them for night-time highway/country driving where there are no streetlights). Here again, no one has ever flashed me with the fogs on either.
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The Stock Lights
My last car was a 2000 Toyota Camry V6. It was a great highway cruiser and I was sad to see it go, but only for about 30 seconds since I traded it in for the Magnum. One of its most noteworthy features was a lighting system that -- even bone-stock -- was the best of any auto I have ever driven. Before that, I have added Euro front grille assemblies to other cars I have owned, and found the European specification for what constitutes a good headlight to leave our poor DOT-spec lights in the dust.
Enter the Magnum. I picked it up on an evening and the first thing I noticed was the lighting system was, by comparison with what I expect from a headlight, pathetic. I felt downright unsafe with what looked to me like a dim glow in comparison to, for example, the Camry's even distribution of white, not-too-bright-to-piss-off-oncoming-traffic light. Couple that to the fact that very often I am driving in rural areas where I'm the only light source and a change had to be made.
The First Replacement: Sylvania Silverstars
I considered PIAA bulbs, but one look at their web site told me that firm was pursuing an entirely different type of customer. After reading a few form posts at various Dodge Magnum hangouts I decided that Sylvania Silverstars were the replacement bulbs I was looking for. I picked up a set of lo and hi beams for about $60 on EBay.
 Installation is straightforward, if a bit tense. First off you will have to remove the airbox assembly to get at the left-side bulbs. You will almost certainly have to remove the steering wheel fluid reservoir to get at the low beams as well. Both items come out very easily (a couple of screws and a plastic catch lets each lift right out, respectively). My fairly large hands (XL to XXL-sized gloves, USGI size 4) didn't fit well into the space necessary to get to the lo beams. Plus removing the bulbs (with a twist-unlock that has a fairly heavy detent to initiate the process) was far easier than putting them back in again. That same detent was very difficult to re-engage with the leverage available to me in the awkward position I had to be in to get at right-side bulb.
NOTE: With some extra effort (you just have to remove a bunch of 7mm bolts and two 10mm bolts) you can remove the protective panel that covers the front underside of your Magnum and expose the fog lights. Your now-unused 9005 hi beams will fit nicely into these. Reports I've read (i.e. try this at your own risk) indicate the 19-watt increase will not cause any problems with the lenses or wiring. Fuirther, the stock focus -- which you can alter now that you can get to the light housings) is so conservative that oncoming traffic isn't going to give you any trouble over it.
Initially I was pleased. The whiter light seemed brighter, and I had an easier time seeing what was in front of me. Over a bit of time I started seeing more and more forum posts covering the lighting issue in more depth. Visiting places like http://danielsternlighting.com/tech/bulbs/bulbs.html and http://clearcorners.com/services, to name just a very few, made it clear that the reason the Silverstar appears to be a better light has everything to do with the perception of light and nothing to do with the amount of light. In a nutshell here's how they do the voodoo they do:
- The bulbs are coated with a blue film. Its thin and faint on the hi beam and much thicker on the low beam. If you are just eyeballing the bulb this coating is nowhere near as evident as it is with the flash-bulb-lit picture I took above, where it is really obvious (it looks more like a smoke film without the aid of the camera flash). This blue film shifts the color of the light to what is perceived to be a whiter part of the spectrum. Humans -- especially humans beginning to get on in years -- perceive and process whiter light better than yellow light (we process green light best, which is why night vision equipment uses green; not because it has to be that way).
- Thats the good news. The bad news is that to get this color shift the manufacturer had to coat the bulb, and this coating carries a fairly obvious price tag: less light is transmitted since there is something between the light element and the glass. The loss is small but its there, and its significant enough that the bulb manufacturer altered the output of the bulbs to compensate for it: The elements burn hotter, and this means they burn out faster. A lot faster by some reports. At $15 per bulb (or a lot more depending on where you buy) this is going to get old, especially if you have to remove stuff from under the hood to get at the bulbs.
- So while the Silverstar appears to be brighter, it isn't. The difference is literally all in our heads.
The difference may be in my head, but so are my eyeballs. With the Silverstars I could see better... right? It sure felt like it. Either way the reduced bulb life, this perception business and the availability of a very promising alternative led me to jump ship.
Halogen Infra Red Bulbs
Bill Fox' http://hirheadlights.com goes into excellent detail on these bulbs, what they are, how they came to be etc. No sense reinventing the wheel so go to his site to read up on the things. Also the http://clearcorners.com/services link mentions this technology, as does Daniel Stern in some PT Cruiser and Toyota Prius forum posts, which I'll leave to you to Google up. There's also quite a bit more on this at http://www.bmwz.org/articles/lighting/0506trick/.
One thing that HIR and any other ultra-bright bulb needs is a sharp 'cutoff' of light output. In other words, the light goes to the road and not out in a full arc in front of the car, including the sky -- and the faces of oncoming drivers. Without this you will piss off everyone coming at you, including the next state trooper who happens by. The good news is the Magnum has just such a sharp cutoff, although it is a little oddly shaped. You can see it by shining the lights at your garage door at night while sitting in the driveway.
These little buggers aren't cheap at about $130 per set of 4, but they do indeed seem to be the best technology available pending a proper, legal HID setup, which isn't coming to the Magnum anytime soon, and in any case if it does sure will run you a lot more than these bulbs. So I sprung for a set on Bill's recurring Ebay dutch auction. I had a question on shipping and Bill responded to my email promptly. The bulbs arrived quickly via express mail, and were well packed.
Only one problem: Just one out of four fit into the housing! As it turns out this was fairly simple to cure. All that is needed is a file, a decent set of calipers and about 30 minutes of time in the garage and you'll be all set. The bulbs will fit in nice and smooth. In fairness to the product and the seller this appears necessary thanks to the Magnum. It has nothing to do with the bulbs, which apparently fit quite well unaltered in a wide variety of other vehicles.
HIR Installation
The 9011 and 9012 bulbs need a touch of surgery -- trimming the top tab -- to get them to fit into the stock housing, and this is provided by the seller as part of the deal. No sweat there.
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Looking at the HIR bulb I tried to jam into the hi beam, I could see a light scuffing on the plastic at the end of the barrel housing. So it seemed the jamup was here. Comparing the two bulbs side by side the difference in barrel lengths was obvious.
In a nutshell the problem is this: In the Magnum, the end of the bulb's barrel housing, which is chamfered, seals to the end of the hole, more or less. It does not enter it completely. The HIR, on the other hand, expects to be able to get fully into the bulb hole, which it turns out is a few 100th's of an inch too narrow to allow this. |
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So the trick for the hi beams is to file down this forward-most portion of the housing -- the part in front of the O-ring -- so that it will fit. You will want to remove the O-ring first to keep from filing it down as well. And you can sure bet that you don't want to touch the glass bulb, although you probably will while working. Keep a soft cloth -- I used a CLEAN microfiber glass cleaner cloth -- handy to wipe the bulb prior to installation.
I used a fine-to-medium grade full-size file (Home Depot, $4). One of the sides of the file is serrated. Use that edge rather than the full file face unless you want to scuff the bulb if your hand slips. Use firm but even strokes rotating around the barrel until your calipers tell you that about 2/100th's to 4/100th's of an inch of diameter has been evenly removed from the barrel. The exact amount will vary a bit by housing. Check fitment as you file. Just like in gunsmithing, its a lot easier to file metal off than it is to put it back on again. |
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So much for the high beams. It turns out the low beams, which also need the same shaving as the hi-beams, have another issue that is also easy to fix: The 'top' tab, the one that has already had its width reduced before it gets to your doorstep -- is also too tall, and as such will never engage the locking mechanism no matter how hard you twist (you really want to just take my word on this and not try it on your own housing).
You will easily be able to see the scope of the problem by holding the bulbs together as shown at left. When there is no longer any daylight left between the two (the bulb at left is already finished) you have filed enough away. I also rounded the edges a bit for good measure. |
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