ldt1

I had a foglight bulb die, so I went to the local autozone and napa store and all they carried were the h3 bulbs in the overpriced blue light package for 20 bucks. I broke down and bought one and have to say they really are brighter than the standard halogens. they are the correct wattage 55w so I am assuming they won't burn any wiring or switches. also they just look really white, and not "blue" . They even had them for tailights and those babies were 20 bucks too. I know it's a marketing tactic but the fogs really are quite a lot brighter than the standard halogen bulbs. I have two 951's so I will line them up together tonight and take a look.

Epic2112

Take a picture

ehall

what brand did you use on your car. i'm having an issue with mine. TIA

johne

New bulbs are always brighter than old bulbs. As bulbs age tungsten is deposited on the inside of the glass making the bulb less clear/bright.

Here's a question. How can putting a coating on the glass make the bulbs put out more light when a fundamental aspect of a coating is that it will reduce some aspect of the light?

-John

ldt1

The one I purchased is made by sylvania, that was the only type of that particular bulb that the autozone and napa stores I went to, carries. I recall buying foglight bulbs in the past for around 10 bucks. I remember also that the cheap ones did not last very long. I confess that I have no idea what makes them brighter than the original style bulbs, but they are considerably more bright.

Danno

It could be subjective too. Your eyes are more sensitive to the higher-frequency end of the visible spectrum. So if the same number of lumens were to be emitted towards the blue end, it will appear brighter even though it's the same amount of light as a lower-frequency output. Here's an interesting article:

Overboost.com - High Performance Headlights

FWIW, I replaced the stock headlights with some $5.99 Sylvania specials from Pep Boys. WOW!!! They were easily 2x as better than the stock lights. But when I went to the IceShark set-up, that was easily 3-4x better than the Sylvanias and 10x better than stock!

IceShark

As John noted you shouldn't compare old used and new bulbs. The halogen regenerative cycle isn't 100% perfect so there will be some depositing of tungsten from the filament on the cooler glass envelope which then acts as a filter and reduces light transmission. Also, the filament gets thinner as it gases off tungsten and becomes less efficient. Eventually the filament will break or burn up in the thinner spots and that is how you lose the bulb totally. Which is why people say replace both headlight bulbs if just one burns out - the other bulb has so much tungsten on the glass you may as well change it out.

As far as the blue filters, what they are doing is removing non-blue components of the light so it appears whiter to the human eye but you are actually getting less total light out of the bulb than an equivalent bulb in clear. Acutally, the legit manufacturers had to do quite a bit of work when designing the blue bulbs to up the light output to keep the bulbs in the legal range of 850 to 1150 lumens for H4 style bulbs. Build the bulbs the same except for the blue filter: a clear bulb will kick a blue bulb's butt everytime.

So why did the legit manufacturers like Philips/Narva and Osram/Sylvania start selling blue bulbs? Customer demand as they like the way the bulbs look and the manufacturers wanted to cash in on the color fad. They can charge more money and get it for a blue bulb than they can for a clear one. Plain and simple as that.

Actually, for fog lights that are really supposed to work as fogs you want clear or a yellowish color to them, not blue. You can see better with those when there is fog or water droplets in the air in front of you.