Hi to all, have just replaced a pair of headlight bulbs. I have owned my 2007 for the last 3 years and have only looked back by way of the rear view mirror.
The only issue recently is the lack of brightness with the headlights. I carried out a very decent restoration of both lenses as they were quite misted and there was a slight improvement however not enough to give adequate night vision.

Before

After

A new battery needed replacing recently only to offer no change so after much time looking into the minefield of which type of replacement bulbs to purchase I have opted for the following from Amazon ..

Sinoparcel D1S Xenon Bulb -2 Years Warranty- 35W 8000K HID Headlight Replacement -Discharge Lamp -Pack of 2


The difference can bee seen as below from one to the other


Looking better on the left already

Have taken her out for an early evening spin with both lights replaced and very pleased with the greatly improved brightness and will fully test in pitch black tomorrow.
I know this topic has been discussed many times and I don't expect the bulbs to outlive myself but for the price and vast improvement for night driving, I am very pleased as it was getting to the stage whereby I was not sure if I had or not turned the original lights on whilst driving.
The only thing that I will test out after reading other recommendations is to remove the scatter plates inside the lenses but that will be for another weekends task.
I will continue to post if there are further issues and hope this may be of help to anyone with similar problems.

 

One thing... the projector lens should not be cloudy, but very clear. The bulbs inside cause this, and it can be cleaned with some careful labor.

 

Nice. However I seem to recall reading in another thread about recommended temperature for best night vision, and 8k seems higher than that, could be wrong though.

 

Hi , thanks. Is the highlighted area what you refer to as the projector lens? I have noted that both of mine are not exactly clear

 

Yes, those. Accessible (somewhat) from the bulb location using long swabs or whatever. Not EASY, per se, but doable.

 

Brilliant, thankyou. I have plans to to improve the outer lenses even further even though they are 90% better than before but that was whilst they were still in place on the car.
I shall go one better with your suggestion and do a full restoration with the lamp units removed to ensure a complete job.
Thank you

 

No worries, have also been reading various suggestions and understand that it can also vary even depending on individuals eyesight.
Will keep posting my results and reviews. Thank you

 

I have this issue. What does "careful labor" look like?

 

Well, the lenses are quite away down a hole which is covered by the low beam hatches. I used the long wooden Q-tip things and it still took a fairly long while to get a mostly passable job done for my kid's car (now exploded). Course my thumbs don't work well anymore and my eyesight is worse than it was.

 

I pulled the lenses from my x100 without removing the headlights from the car, and the backside of the lenses actually seemed etched, not just dirty. I could never determine if that was damage or factory finish.

So my question to the group is, "should they be clear?"

 

Certainly not a silvery cloud...

 

I was going to crop this, but it's too pretty...

 

The OE color temp spec for every car fitted with HID headlamps is 4300 kelvins which offers the best pavement illumination at night. The higher (cooler) the color temp, the lower the lumen output with 6000k being the highest recommend. HID lamps dim over time (halide crystals, xenon gas and electrode wear) which’s why new fitted will appear considerably brighter than old ones. Personally I’ve be had best success with XENARC replacements and considering how long they last it’s a small investment.

 

Mine have cataracts and I think I’m going to try cleaning the inside of the projectors. Im sure its easier if the headlight is removed. Ill take before and after pics if doable.

 

Yeah,, mine are definitely not that clear.

 

Yeah, neither are mine.

 

+1.
I just replaced my headlight bulbs with Osram 4300k XENARC bulbs and they work very well.
I personally don’t care for the whiter/bluer bulb colors as they tend to cast harsher shadows. The headlamps in my car aren’t perfectly clear, but close enough for my purposes.

 

I installed a set of LED plug and play bulbs today. I noticed a huge difference in daylight. The bulbs that came out were a set of Osram HIDs. They were already burnt at the center which explains why the xenon
gas wasn’t giving much light output. When these bulbs were installed two years ago, they were not impressive and I just thought the ballasts were the problem. But 2 years later, I decided to add these and the difference literally night, and day. This is also with cloudy projectors. I will take a pic and load in a few mins once the sun is down. Keep in mind that before going LED, I had almost no lighting to depend on while driving at night.

 

Here we go.


Top picture is with LED upgrade and no foglights. Picture below is with LED upgrade and the halogen foglights I have been depending on at night. The Fog lights were brighter than the low beam, before switching to LED I’m going upgrade to LED fogs tomorrow. Will post pics soon.

 

@Matt Bonding what did you use to restore the headlights?