Hi Everyone,
I need new H4 headlight bulbs for the 500E and the E320. I was thinking of going with PIAA but the price range for them is so drastically different, I just wanted to check and see if thier worth all the hype. If not, who makes a good H4 bulb? The 500E had the Euro headlight converson done with upgraded wire guage and relays. Unfortuantely the wiring job sucks and I will eventually correct it. Since this conversion has been done I can now increase the output of my bulbs in the 500E. What is the highest wattage bulbs I can/should run?
Thanks!
Adam

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Current Stable:
01 ML55 AMG
92 500E (a few mods)
87 300E (lots of mods)
00 Chevy 3500HD Diesel Box Truck
68 18' Donzi Marine
06 GT i-Drive7 1.0 Mountain Bike (with GPS!)

PREVIOUSLY OWNED:83 300SD, 87 420SEL, 88 420SEL, 90 420SEL, 86 560SEL, 86 190E 2.3-16V AMG, 94 E320

Sylvania Silverstars in my opinion...legal and bright...

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Proud owner of ....
1971 280SE W108
1979 300SD W116
1983 300D W123
1975 Ironhead Sportster chopper
1987 GMC 3/4 ton 4X4 Diesel
1989 Honda Civic (Heavily modified)
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Section 609 MVAC Certified
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"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche

i use and suggest sylvania silverstars, it is essential to use the correct wattage if the lamps have the adjusters, i believe larry bible had a post somewhere saying that the higher wattage bulbs can melt some parts of the adjuster mechanism. i had some higer wattage on my car for a time, but really didn't see that much benefit

Phillips Vision Plus. I don't know if they're legal or not in the US. I had them ordered from the UK.

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You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows - Robert A. Zimmerman

PIAA is garbage - pure marketing BS, don't fall for it. Check the Daniel Stern lighting website for an indepth discussion of these bulbs.

In my experience going from USA spec to Euro spec lights gets you about 95% of the benefit in improved lighting - fooling around with bulb "X" is better than bulb "Y" is not really going to result in much of an improvement and I've tried both of the previously mentioned bulb suggestions.

Higher wattages will make a dramtic difference but of course it's a bit annoying for oncoming drivers to have to face your 100W low beams and it may even be dangerous for them in certain weather conditions.

Using the beforementioned Daniel Stern website, I upgraded the headlights on my 240-D years ago. Went from the typical 55/65 or so wattage to 80/100 watts instead. Quite a change! But you do have to consider oncoming traffic and if the wiring can take the extra watts.

Here's his website:

http://www.danielsternlighting.com/home.html

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Current:
2014 VW Tiguan SEL 4Motion 43,000 miles.

2016 Hyundai Santa Fe Sport (wife's).

Past:
2006 Jetta TDI 135,970 miles. Sold Nov. '13.
1995 E-320 Special Edition. 220,200 miles. Sold Sept. '07.
1987 190-E 16 valve. 153,000 miles. Sold Feb. '06.
1980 300-D 225,000 miles. Donated to the National Kidney Foundation.
1980 240-D manual, 297,500 miles. Totaled by inattentive driver.

It's not the power of the bulbs per se that matters, but mostly the shape of the beam, which determines the distribution of light on the road ahead. This is traditionally determined by the combination of the reflector and the lens. On many of the modern lamps however (e.g., Hella's FF lamps), the shaping of the beam is done entirely by the reflector, with a clear lens that does nothing to further shape the beam.

Because the US-spec lowbeam projects a blob of light down the road where the illumination gradually tapers off around the edges of the projected blob, aiming the lowbeam for proper illumination of the road ahead will always project a non-trivial amount of light into the eyes of oncoming drivers. Using more powerful bulbs will produce proportionately more of this offending glare.

Contrast this with Euro-spec headlamps, which have the _/_/ lowbeam pattern - if properly aligned, they will not blind oncoming traffic on a straight and level road, no matter how powerful the bulbs are.

Incidentally, because the available light of the bulb in a Euro-spec lamp is better managed than in US-spec lamps, you get much-improved illumination with Euro-spec lamps, even without upgrading the power of the bulbs.

Not all bulbs are created equal, however. For example, the Philips Vision Plus H4 bulbs have a slightly different filament shape/placement that places more illumination in the sweet spot of the lowbeam further ahead, resulting in an effectively longer beam.

I agree.

My E-320 has OEM headlights for US spec. Better than most other US type headlights and actually similar to european ones. But I drive with the fog lights illuminated as well and regularly have oncoming drivers flash me as though I have my high beams on. Heck, last month a cop pulled me over because he thought I was driving with my brights on. I had to have him stand in front of my car while I cycled through the low/high and fog lights to show why he was mistaken. He let me go without a citation.

My 16-valve has aftermarket european headlights. They're fantastic!

__________________

Current:
2014 VW Tiguan SEL 4Motion 43,000 miles.

2016 Hyundai Santa Fe Sport (wife's).

Past:
2006 Jetta TDI 135,970 miles. Sold Nov. '13.
1995 E-320 Special Edition. 220,200 miles. Sold Sept. '07.
1987 190-E 16 valve. 153,000 miles. Sold Feb. '06.
1980 300-D 225,000 miles. Donated to the National Kidney Foundation.
1980 240-D manual, 297,500 miles. Totaled by inattentive driver.

I've got Euros w/ white fog lamps, which really make a difference when it comes to seeing wildlife on the edges of the road.
I have other drivers flash me because they see 4 beams in a row, not 2 up and 2 down, which is typical for regular and fog lamps.
They're not flashing because the beams are in their eyes. Far from it. Mine are aimed properly. They're flashing because they think they're the Hi-Beam Police.
So, I let 'em have it back with the real ones. Clearly, it doesn't take much to entertain me.

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85' 300D No inspection, No registration fees, Cheap insurance
"If my calculations are correct, when this baby hits 88 miles per hour, you're going to see some serious %$&^."

Who has the best headlights?.....

Hmm......

Pamela Anderson's are pretty nice..... Halle Berry's shine quite nicely too....

OH!... You meant CAR headlights?... Oops.

.... Sorry.... I couldn't resist.

Mike

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1979 300 SD
350,000 miles
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1982 300D-gone---sold to a buddy
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1985 300TD
270,000 miles
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1994 E320
not my favorite, but the wife wanted it

www.myspace.com/mikemover
www.myspace.com/openskystudio
www.myspace.com/speedxband
www.myspace.com/openskyseparators
www.myspace.com/doubledrivemusic

Straight and level are the keywords for me. Even in flat MS there are still plenty of hills that are big enough to cause problems for on-coming drivers.

Couldn't agree more. The stock 65/55 bulbs work fantastic. The low-beam has a very sharp-edged and uniform beam that does an excellent job illuminating the road. With the excellent reflector I don't think it's necessary to run anything higher than 55W low, and the 65W high beam induces a significant amount of glare from reflective road signs.

I have some 100/55 bulbs and some relays laying around for whenever I have the free time to hook them up. The 100W will come in very handy on those back roads with nobody around (and no road signs!) except those pesky deer.

Random side note... on the _/_/ pattern... whats up with the /? why not just _ _ ? Illuminates the side of the road better I suppose, but is that it?

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John Robbins
'05 E320 CDI - 240k
'87 300TD - 318k

Second on Dan Stern for expert guidance on building the ultimate lighting system. You can go cheaper but you can't go better. Cheaper (but good) is powerbulbs.com, which sells Osram (euro-spec) Silverstars and Philips Vision Plus, which are plus-50 H4 bulbs that will not fry a standard wiring harness. I think they run about $36 a pair for either bulb, shipped from the UK.

IME the Osram and Philips bulbs are a toss-up -- I read a European magazine article somewhere that concluded the Philips bulbs are marginally better.

Stern can probably steer you to some quality 100-130w bulbs that will work fine with a relayed lighting system. Dan will help you light up the highway, if that's what you want.

That said, I've found even 80-100W bulbs to be somewhat irritating while driving on exurban freeways with large reflective signs. That kind of lighting power can be dazzling when it's bouncing back at you!

Actually, I guess I was "thirding" www.danielsternlighting.com ...

Hey Evil, greetings from another cheesehead.

The "/" portion of the beam illuminates not only the roadside objects on the passenger side (e.g., road signs, pedestrians), but with sufficient distance on an unlit highway at night, also (partially) illuminates the overhead highway signs. The US-spec beam has a small portion of the light aimed upwards for this purpose.

The problem with the sharp horizontal cutoff is that objects suddenly come into view from darkness into light, leaving little warning for the driver, making it easy to "over-drive" your low beams - I believe that this was the rationale for the "blob of light" design of the US-spec headlamps. The "/" portion of the Euro-spec beam alleviates this problem somewhat, with the "/" portion of the left beam illuminating the road ahead of the "_" portion of the right beam; only the left side of the road effectively has the sharp horizontal cutoff, but that's not where you're headed anyway.

The "/" parts of the beam also make you visible to drivers you are overtaking, assuming that you overtake on the proper side of the road.

For daytime running purposes however, the objective is to be seen rather than to see. For this role, the US-spec (lowbeam) headlamps would fare better, since they inherently direct some glare to oncoming drivers. The Euro-spec headlamps would need to use the highbeam, albeit at lower power, for effective DRL use. My car does not have DRL, and I use my foglamps instead, since it casts a wider beam, making it visible across a wider angle; it also has enough stray light to be visible enough to oncoming traffic.

I have Bosch Euro-lamps for my 190e2.6, and though expensive, are proving to be one of the best investments I've made on my car. I just love driving down unlit 2-lane backroads at night.