stanj
12-15-1998, 08:50 AM
Not so long ago, and yesterday again, there was the discussion about PIAA Superwite and Plasma Blue H7 light bulbs. Back then I was offered a set of Plasma Blues, saying that they are "the closest in color and brightness to a Xenon light" short of a HID. Bitchin' about the poor light of the A4, I bit the expensive bullet and bought into it.<p>Monday morning I installed the bulbs in the low beams. After turning them on, I noticed that the color was noticeably blue. Oh well I thought. Arriving at work in the underground garage I noticed that I didn't see a light pattern ahead of me. Oh well, I still must be asleep, it's only 11:30. At 7pm I was driving from Cupertino to SF on I-280 and let me tell you, there were two reasons why I turned on the fogs (usually off for those who care): (a) I wanted to "dilute" the blue color and thus look less like a dork and (b) actually get some light.<p>At 10pm tonight, after returning from the city, I put the original bulbs back in. Before that, though, I did a reasonably scientific test: I parked the car in the garage, everything was perfectly dark, just the lights on. With a professional incident light meter I measured the output of the headlights. Measured at the wall about 1.5m away, with the PIAA, the right light gave EV6.6 and the left one EV5.7 at the brightest spot. Back with the stock bulbs, the values were 7.8 and 6.8. Guess what, this means that the stock bulb gave an absolute value of TWO TIMES as much light as the PIAA plasma blue. And it was white, too, not this blue like a typical Macintosh screen background, a beautiful blue that (hopefully) will make the average cop rage.<p>For those of you who care for my advice - don't do it. Don't know about Superwhites, never saw one. But after 80 miles with the Plasma Blues - don't. Euro headlights look so much more appealing now...<p>In the search for light,<br>- Stan<br>