headlight bulbs

[canis]

Originally Posted by Rossi-fan

I'm sick to death of being blinded by oncoming headlights. It must be great to see a nice brightly lit road in front of you at the expense of the poor sod coming towards you.

Me too. I'd like to take the high-brightness bulbs, and shove 'em somewhere really dark.

[ThomasG]

Witch hunt begins..

Does it matter what I'd say?

[owyn]

Don't worry about it too much, someone's always gonna have a problem with anything you do.

It is interesting though that with the same bulbs in some cars have pretty effective lights and others don't. My old V70 was really quite good but I understand the old S40/V50 were terrible. My A4 has notoriously poor halogens, I wish I had waited and found a car with the xenon lights in. As it is I was hoping to bring my at about into line with what my old V70 was like.

[DaveNP]

I was surprised recently when at work I was trying to find the legislation regarding lightbulb wattages, basically there is none. I'd always assumed the regular 50w headlights and 5/20w tail and stop lights were 'legal', oddly for stop and tail lights it would be legal to have a brighter tail light than brake light!

In the OPs case I wonder if the headlights for a 98 V90 are more affected by deterioration of the reflectors rather than the wattage of the bulb, and the dodgy reflector probably doesn't help with the beam pattern.

[derek vivian]

I wonder if I could use 100w bulbs in the headlights which would then be dimmed for DRL. Does anyone know what percentage reduction dimming does? If 50 percent then the DRL would be a lot brighter than using 55W bulbs and when it is necessary to switch to headlights they would be considerably brighter perhaps enough to combat these modern LED sorts? Just a thought!

[Simon Jones]

I would have thought if the car has dimming DRLs then its probably running LEDs rather than halogen bulbs (I've got bi-xenon that are on all the time). If it does use halogen bulbs then you could add the control circuitry to the list of bulb holders / wiring / plastic components that could be damaged by practically doubling the current consumption.

[derek vivian]

Simon, you raise an interesting query or concern! Each headlight circuitry is protected by a fuse of 15Amp which is 180 watts. So, unless the relay and bulb holders are not capable of taking 100Watts I can see no problem. There is another possibly smaller concern which is taking more watts than the alternator circuit is designed for, but that doesn't sound too much of a problem. Incidentally, my V90 (1997) uses halogen bulbs of H1 design so are not Xenon.

[ThomasG]

Careful there.
Fuses are designed to blow (typically within 0.4 seconds) at marked current.
Lesser current- more time to blow, but it will blow regardless.
Ie: with a 15amp fuse I would expect tines of roughly:
0.4 sec at 15 amp or over
About 2 sec at 14 amp
Few hours at 10 amp

Electronics as such will be desigbed to withstand given 15 (or over) amperage for short period only.
That's precaution against secondary damage in case of, for example, short bulb.

This is to give fuse time to blow.

But for long term..
I'd say don't.

As I said- the only reason I keep them is that they didn't blow yet
Otherwise I see no benefit.

I had a 55W Philips with blue coating fitted once in rhs light and 100w in the other.
Standing in front I could see no difference.
Sitting behind wheel- no difference.
Maybe if I was turning lights off one at time, I'd see something..

[green van man]

I tried those high output bulbs in my P1 V70, none were as good as standard 55w bulbs in new headlight units.
Unfortunately, despite being a Hella unit the only place I could find them was Volvo at £160+ a time.

I bit the bullet and wished I'd done so months before instead of fafing with the high output bulbs.
The reflectors tarnish, this eventually affects the beam pattern and you fail MOT.

Paul.

[Simon Jones]

The P2 S60/V70 (amongst other Volvo models) have a known weakness of the plastic bulb holder disintegrating as it deteriorates with the heat. The normal solution is to replace them with a ceramic holder so you're already starting with headlamp unit that's been slowly cooked over the years due to the headlights (generally) being on all the time the engine is running so by doubling the power / heat will only serve to shorten it's lifespan even faster.