I was at a traffic light this evening when the car stopped in the other lane kept flashing his lights at me. As in he flashed them repeatedly until our signals turned green and we passed each other.
I looked over to my friend and shrugged.
Well, it turns out that both my headlights were burned out! It was dusk, so seeing your own headlights being on or off is difficult.
What really bugs me is that I had replaced bought those headlights last December. At the time I decided to get what I thought were the best possible. So, I picked up a pair of Sylvania SilverStars for $50. Seeing as they were near double the price of other bulbs, I figured they must be fantastic!
Frankly, I couldn’t tell a difference between those new bulbs and the ones I had replaced. I decided to look online for reviews and was shocked by the bad comments I read. What really worried me were the reports of very short bulb life.
Man, I wish I had researched them before buying. Oh well.
I still can’t believe they both burned out at the same time! That is, I assume they went at the same time, though it is possible one had been out and I didn’t notice.
So now I have the cheap bulbs in my car and the brightness seems fine. I think the odds are good that I’ll get more than 6 months from these, too.
It’s not unusual to hit a severe bump and burn out a couple lights at a time that have inferior construction. A bump might be all it took to break the filaments in both headlights at the same time. We used to have an ATV that burned out the low beam every time we went on a trip. Buying a different brand bulb and not letting my brother buy the same one again after multiple repeats stopped that. You live and learn if your smart or don’t if your not. Sometimes you need intervention.
It’s a classic “You can have X or have Y or have Z” situation - in this case, you can have bright bulbs, or you can have long-lasting bulbs, or you can have inexpensive bulbs.
Short life is a common fault with the extra-bright bulbs.
About the only way to get bright, long-lasting bulbs is to upgrade to HID, which is not a job for the faint-hearted. They’re much more than $50 - more like $500, plus a lot of labor.
you really don’t want to “upgrade” to HID unless the kit comes with new headlamp housings. HIDs work best in a “projector” type of lamp and simply sticking HID bulbs in a conventional reflector isn’t going to work optimally.