Evo Soul

In someways I think I have beat to death this topic, but since I keep getting emails about them, I think I will take another shot.   I will come right out and say it.   When it comes to lighting, I am not the smartest guy in the world, far from it.   Everything I learned the old fashion way.  Trial and error.   And Trial and Error = money wasted.

10 Years ago I got my very first car, and like alot of cars out there it was an import.  Great car, bulletproof you could say, but one of the biggest pains in the ass is the headlights would always blow out, more so on the passenger side than the driver side.   Funny thing was, that it wasnt the OEM bulb that was blowing out, but the aftermarket (cool looking at the time) halogen bulbs.  I tried bulbs from ebay,  Eurolights, and other no name brands and slowly worked my way up the chain to find quality bulbs that A) looked good B) last longer than a year.   I finally arrived at what I thought was the top quality stuff.   Stuff from PIAA.  And once you said PIAA 10 years ago…  everyone said it, they were the top dog.   Or so i thought.  My choice, the Super Plasma GT-X from PIAA.

Word on the street is that they enhanced lighting much better over OEM.  and for a while it did.  Gave me maybe 30% more light and they were alot better looking at as well.  Unfortuantely, 2 months later one of the bulbs failed.  (damn)  so i went back to the Big box store I bought them from (Canadian Tire) and put thru a warranty claim.  Keystone sent a new set, and then bang. off the races again.   Low and behold, another blow out.  &#*#.  Went back to Canadian Tire did the same thing.   It was on my 3rd blow out without a year that made me say to myself I just wasted 69 bucks.  *they are price bulb.  Was it the technology?  was it the brand?  what the hell was wrong.   It was when I asked around and digged deeper I discovered the problem.  And it was something that the ordinary and even the smart guys would have missed.   And this comes down to the main part of this article.

Now I will start off by saying,  Different manufacturers have different levels of manufacturering and tolerance quality.  The reason why I say this is because I found it funny that my OEM bulbs (now 4 years old at the time) were still working no problems,  everytime I had a blow out i would put them in and they would work no problem.  Why was that GE OEM bulbs.   And thats because no one on earth mades so many bulbs, they go thru layers and layers of batch testing.  its one business they are good at and thats why they score so many OEM contracts.   But why,?  why is that?    Because GE tests these bulbs for all conditions possible when in the hands of a car owner.  And one of the things that just kills bulbs, and I mean kills a halogen bulb is voltage / power variations.    What do i mean?

Let me give you more specs to work with.  We will take my old (now burried)  honda Accord car.    I had a stereo system in it for like 3 years,  a 200 watt amp one 12″ sub in the back, and a nice indash sony deck.   Sweet (well for 2001 it was) .   And I would turn that thing up and just soak up the music.  What I did know is that I was murdering my headlights via the voltage spikes and drops happening during each beat of the song.   See when I was buying the stereo, I wasnt sure if I should get a capacitor or not.  When I mentioned it to the Futureshop installers (bestbuy company now)  he first laughed and said, this thing isnt pulling anywhere near the amount of power where you would need a capacitor.  So I beleived him and installed it just as is.   (BIG FRIGGING MISTAKE)

I murdered not only PIAA bulbs (3 sets) Euro lights (2 sets) and my favorite halogen bulbs at the time (about 5 sets) over the span of 4 years.  I figured, this is what these bulbs have to offer, its just the nature of the beast, you want nice looking lights, you just have to keep buying replacements.    And that was just sooooo wrong.   I didnt realize that power variation kills bulb filaments.    This is why they tell you in school when your young not to play with the lights by flicking them on and off.   But let me go deeper and explain.

Crutchfield.com use to have great articles over the time, stuff with diagrams packed with alot of information, lately over the years they have updated things and made it more basic.   But I remember a great diagram that illustrated what happend in a car when you had an audio system that was to powerful for your amp.   It was great it would show / explain how your power system worked in your car and how it would attempt to balance / compensate for any drops or dips in your power requirements.

For the sake of making a over simplified point.

Jim buys a audio system,  its rated 1000 watts,  and he drives a 1.7 accord or something.   When he starts kicking that music hard, in the beginning his car is fine but as time goes by, he car alternator has to work harder and supply power to compensate for the drop in battery power.   Generally your alternators job is to run the car and charge the battery,  thats it, but in this case, the battery was being so depleted in an uneven kinda way that it was constantly switching back and forth to charge the battery and meet the requirements of the audio system, in some cases, what might happen if the battery drops too low, your audio will just trip out and stop working until power comes back up.   But what you dont see happening on the micro level is.   Your headlights are being surged with power on every beat.  And that is something that will decrease the life of your halogen bulbs.

But you dont need a killer audio system to see that happen.  If you drive a slightly older car, say 2002.  If you sit there in park say in a dark garage,  with the A/C on, and just wait, you will see that when your cooling radiator fan kicks on your headlights will slightly dim.  when the fan stops (30 seconds later) your headlights might be slightly brighter then when you started.  This all has to do with the load placed on the battery.  Remember the job of your alternator is to recharge the battery.  thats a load on your car and it will be visible.

One final example, similar to the previous.  be in a dark place like a garage,  sit there with the car running.   While in park give the car a bit of gas,  you should see your headlights get a bit brighter as you tug on the gas.  Remember your alternator generates more power as the RPMs climb.   This is what I would discribe as variation in power.    Even if its 2% or 5% or in some really old cars 10 to 15% that takes a toll on your headlights.

Getting back to what I said about build quality and tolerance.  PIAA or any other company may hook up 1000 bulbs from a lot and test to see how long they will last.  to make an over simplified example, run them for 3 months straight,  maybe only 10 might fail,  and they might say, ok thats pretty good, failure rate is low, and its acceptable.  But you now know, its not.  for people that put a higher demand on their car.  now thats just PIAA, what about companys that do even weaker tests, and have higher failure rates, they might not car and push bulbs out the door anyway.   Hense why when it comes to no name brand bulbs, they kill them selves left and right.

Pretty Depressing story right?  But there are steps you can take to preserve your halogen based stuff if you find yourself in the same boat as I was in, and I will review what this stuff has to do with HID based technology.  ;)  thats enough for now.