Is one brighter headlight illegal?

steve-L

GolfBravo wrote: »

Just to clarify light bulb marketing blurb: Plus 30% aftermarket light bulbs (or 50%, or 90%, or whatever) don't produce 30% more light. The 55W+30% light bulb doesn't suddenly produce 71.5W - it it still 55W.

What is different is the colour temperature. They produce more light with wavelength more suited to human eye - this is achieved by coloured glass coating and higher burn temperature (and significantly shorter lifespan) - they just look "more white".

Take a look at OEM Osram Original Line H7 light bulb and aftermarket Osram Nighbreaker Plus 90% H7 lightbulb. They are both 55W. Original produces light colour of 3200K, Nightbreaker is 3500K. But the luminous flux (the total amount of light energy radiated from the bulb) is 1500lm for both - so the light output is identical, and only the light colour is slightly different. However Nightbreaker Plus expected lifespan is only 150 hours, where the OEM is 330 hours.

The biggest difference between the two from the manufacturer's point of view is the profit margin.

So the answer the original question: yes, 55W "Plus 30%" replacement light bulb is perfectly legal.

That's half the story......
55W is 55W but different bulb technologies can produce more light (measured in lumens) for the same power (watts).
We are all familiar with this in the home..... where a CFL (low energy compact fluorescent) of say 30W is rated as equivalent to 80W for a traditional tungsten/vacuum bulb. (Figures just for illustration)
CFL's are not ideal for cars.... they don't take vibrations well and take a while to 'heat-up'.
More modern LED lighting however is 'more efficient' in the lumens per watt. Here say a 18W LED would supply the same light as a 80W traditional light. LED's are now starting to be used in cars.

Back int he home 20 years ago we had halogen then xenon bulbs...
these produce more light and less heat for the same power, usually by 20-30%.

So some of the 'extra' comes from more efficient technology but some as you say seems to be an extrapolation of the 'visibility' by using a different wavelength of light.

This is somewhat more subjective.....nor can it be linear.. how can they say +50% and it be the same in snow, fog and clear night?

However you can get a pair of OEM Osrams +90 for £11 (online) ... or you can get a single 55W H7 non halogen at Halfords for £7....

murphydavid

steve-L wrote: »

However you can get a pair of OEM Osrams +90 for £11 (online) ... or you can get a single 55W H7 non halogen at Halfords for £7....

As you mention Halfords I will just elaborate on my previous tale of woe. As I said I was away from home ground and in a hurry or it may not have happened. I parked my car outside Halfords and went in. To save time I went to the service counter gave him my registration number and asked if he could tell me which bulb I needed. He looked it up then said "this don't look right. If you have your car outside I'll just check it for you" So I said OK popped the bonnet and he pulled out the broken one and said "Ah it is correct. Now I have the new one here I will just pop it in for you OK?" naive me I said "Sure thanks very much" went inside and paid up £16.00 thinking that's an expensive bulb. Later on I took a look at the receipt £7.00 bulb + £9.00 service charge (for putting it in. Recon it took less than 60 seconds). As far as I'm concerned it was a con and I won't be using Halfords again and I'm please to recommend you watch out for them if you do.

Buellguy

OP, I personally wouldn't care, you will have 2 working headlights, the number of people round here that have a combination of 1 headlight, 1 tail-light, 3/2/1/NON brake lights permenantly on fog lights (front and back) is the one that winds me up

steve-L

murphydavid wrote: »

As you mention Halfords I will just elaborate on my previous tale of woe. As I said I was away from home ground and in a hurry or it may not have happened. I parked my car outside Halfords and went in. To save time I went to the service counter gave him my registration number and asked if he could tell me which bulb I needed. He looked it up then said "this don't look right. If you have your car outside I'll just check it for you" So I said OK popped the bonnet and he pulled out the broken one and said "Ah it is correct. Now I have the new one here I will just pop it in for you OK?" naive me I said "Sure thanks very much" went inside and paid up £16.00 thinking that's an expensive bulb. Later on I took a look at the receipt £7.00 bulb + £9.00 service charge (for putting it in. Recon it took less than 60 seconds). As far as I'm concerned it was a con and I won't be using Halfords again and I'm please to recommend you watch out for them if you do.

LOL.... All true but try changing the bulb in a BMW 330!
I did this all myself and £9.00 per bulb is a lot but some cars (Big Engine/Small Bonnet) can be trickier than others. At times I wondered of the £9.00 was actually worth it To be fair I'd do it myself again but I'm pretty handy, I'd recommend people try and get the bulb out before deciding if paying to have it done is economic or not. If I price a square inch of removed skin at £10.00 then it might actually be non-economic :rotfl:

My old PUG took about 15 secs to change a headlight bulb... even having done the BMW once it still took 15-20 minutes of swearing to fit the second one on the other (easier passenger side).

Yolina

One of the things I look at when I buy a car is how easy (or not as the case may be) it is to change the bulbs, though I'm usually ok doing them as I'm a girl so slender fingers help :rotfl:

I bought a battery from Halfords once many years ago, they offered to fit it for me, it was "only" £5 for fitting at the time... Sorry but no though I might go there next time I need a battery just for entertainment value, as I now have a Yaris hybrid and the 12v battery is not under the bonnet - no room for it with the 2 engines in there - it's behind an removable panel underneath the rear seat (and yes, before anyone asks, I know how to access it!)

murphydavid

steve-L wrote: »

LOL.... All true but try changing the bulb in a BMW 330!
I did this all myself and £9.00 per bulb is a lot but some cars (Big Engine/Small Bonnet) can be trickier than others. At times I wondered of the £9.00 was actually worth it To be fair I'd do it myself again but I'm pretty handy, I'd recommend people try and get the bulb out before deciding if paying to have it done is economic or not. If I price a square inch of removed skin at £10.00 then it might actually be non-economic :rotfl:

My old PUG took about 15 secs to change a headlight bulb... even having done the BMW once it still took 15-20 minutes of swearing to fit the second one on the other (easier passenger side).

Yes its fine to charge for service's That's part of life. That's not what got under my skin. Its that it went "softly softly catchey monkey". Maybe they had a sign up and its my own fault for not looking who knows. I mean if I had asked him to put it in or he had mentioned a service charge that's fine but not just chat to me like a friendly shop assistant all the while slowly working his way into doing it bit by bit. I never even thought to ask or even imagined I was incurring a fee. I think he knew what he was doing. Like my wife commented he saw me coming!

Yolina

It also looks like they've overcharged you if fitting was £9, their site says "We fit headlight bulbs for £6.99 each as well as indicator and brake light bulbs for £3.99"

murphydavid

Yolina wrote: »

It also looks like they've overcharged you if fitting was £9, their site says "We fit headlight bulbs for £6.99 each as well as indicator and brake light bulbs for £3.99"

Maybe I got it wrong. The total on my credit card bill is £16.98. Someone else said the bulb costs £7.00 and a bulb was all I bought. So in round numbers I worked back from there. Water under the bridge now

chrisw

Not sure whether one brighter headlight would be illegal, but it could fail an MOT test if too noticeable. Headlamps should be a matched pair:-

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]A 'matched pair' is a pair of lamps which[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Both emit light of substantially the same colour and intensity, and[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Are both the same size and shape, so that they are symmetrical to one another.[/FONT]

GolfBravo

chrisw wrote: »

Not sure whether one brighter headlight would be illegal, but it could fail an MOT test if too noticeable. Headlamps should be a matched pair:-

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]A 'matched pair' is a pair of lamps which[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Both emit light of substantially the same colour and intensity, and[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Are both the same size and shape, so that they are symmetrical to one another.[/FONT]

The H7 +30% light bulb isn't any "brighter" - it is still only 55W. It may emit up to 30% more light in one particular direction (in a test lab environment) - it simply helps the headlight optics aim the light better where it matters the most: front of the car. There is no extra 30% lumens.

And it may have a slight blue tint to make it look whiter/brighter. And since the bulb filament is smaller it needs to glow hotter/brighter (to produce the total lumens) = different light colour temperature.

My wife's car had two Osram Nightbreaker Plus H7 bulbs (supposedly 90% "brighter") - recently the NS bulb failed, conveniently when driving through a tunnel in Belgium only 400 miles away from home. So I picked up a standard OEM Bosch H7 bulb at a German supermarket for €3.99. Is there any difference between the two? The Nighbreaker Plus appears slightly whiter. Does it appear 90% brighter? No. Does it appear 50% brighter? No. 10%? No. Apart from the cooler light temperature it appears that the light is aimed more to the front, like a hot spot, the light beam is narrower, but that's about it - not a big difference though. And I really hate the short life span (well under 100 hours total in this case).

So unless the OP's lightbulb has that boy racer blue tint (and the old bulb is standard "white") no MOT tester is going to notice any difference.