Boatnik

I am on my third set of Sylvania Silver Star head lights. I love the way they shine. The beam pattern is good and they are plenty bright. However, they don't last. The first set lasted about six months, The second set a little less so I went to the Wagner's high performance headlights. They are too narrow and the low and high beam are greatly mismatched as far as alignment goes. Two weeks ago I bought another set of Silver Stars and I lost the passenger side high and low beam last night. (Slow learner) Actually it has been a year since I tried them and I hoped they got better. I was wondering if anyone else is having the same or similar results.

I just ordered a set of Hella Vision Plus Conversion Headlamps. They cost about the same as the Silver Stars and I only have to change the bulb when they blow.

My headlights are fed by ten gauge wire thru 30 amp relays straight from the battery. The low beams stay on with the high beams. Every other brand lamp lasts a lot longer with the same set up.

93flatbed

I've got HID's and will never go back. Never had a problem, and no need for relays or even upgrades on wires, they draw very low amps and have their own moduals/power supplies. The bulbs are also life time warrenty!

Oldschooldodge

What brand/type of HID's are you running?

93flatbed

Xenon 10,000K true white! Through H4 projection housings to keep it "leagal"
In total I've got less than 150$ in the whole system, but I'd spend 3x that much.
I live out where there are no stree lights very few houses are lite up at night, and for some reason people like to ride horses and quads at night with no warning you are on top of them. I almost took out a little girl on her quad on night and it scared the heck out of me (It wouldn't of been my fault but I don't think I could live with myself, if I wasn't paying attention it would of ended up really bad!), that's when I ended up going the route I did!

Boatnik

I'm in between jobs right now so spending that kind of money on anything but the dire necessities is doubtful. I also travel country roads where you meet just about anything on the road at night. Also as I get older the less I see after dark. That is why I went with the conversions for $45. I will be putting a set of 100/65 watt bulbs in them when they come in. The DOT dosen't like them, but I like hitting a big buck less. The heavy wire is already installed and the plug is the same.

82F100SWB

I swear by the replacement reflectors. Both of my Fords have Bosch e-codes in them, the Dodge had brand new Wagner high performance bulbs in it when I got it, so I've been waiting for one of them to die before I swap 'em and do relays.
I have relays and 10ga wire in my wheeling truck, with 100/50W bulbs, wired so the highs and lows are together. I miss having that much light out of the headlights alone, I just hope the DRL circuit doesn't make wiring up the relays a pain... I need some more filler in there to go with the landing lights I have up top, they're a bit too much of a pencil beam.

93flatbed

Yhea I live in the desart so no Bucks, much to my dismay. Lots of fox and cyotes though, but they aren't much of a match for my tires and bumber! Anyways Sorry for the hiJack of the thread. hope it all goes good for you and good luck with the job hunt I know it can be hard in these trying times.

cbtumedic

Running both beams when on high could be killing them, that's a lot of heat to be contained in one housing. Glad to see you already did the heavy wire/relay thing, should've been done that way from the factory. I finally got around to doing so on my cherokee last night and all I can say is WOW, world of diff. My wake up call was last week when I hit that deer, I believe I might've seen him coming earlier if I had some decent light. (what is up with chrysler and cruddy headlight wiring?) I also installed the H4 conversions a couple years ago and love them, although my housings don't have an even beam pattern.

Boatnik

I owned a Toyota Camry and if I remember right both high and low beams work together from the factory. Also, it is only the Silver Stars that are short lived. Everything else I tried seems to last a year or better.

82F100SWB

I've never had an issue with running both beams on on any of my trucks, the 100/50 bulbs in my big truck have been in there for 7 years, and, it was a DD for 4 years of that. My Bosch housings are a glass lens with a metal reflector though.
On one ice road trip I had them on for 11 hours straight, with no issues. I'm sure that both beams on at very low speeds would cause issues just like running my landing lights at low speeds, they burn up very quickly without airflow to keep them cool.

Crossy's son

dumb question, how are you guys changing "bulbs".

The headlight is all one peice on all our 1st gens?

93flatbed

check ebay and other place's like that for the H4 housing. It makes it so you can have "replacement" bulbs. I don't think I can post links but just go there and try that you'll see what I'm talking about!

bigredbrick

I had SilverStars in the wife's Caravan, they lasted longer than your experience, maybe 2 years, but not long enough. I wound up putting the OE '98 bulb back in until I could get to NAPA. I pulled the one good Silverstar to look it over and the filament broke just getting it out! Apparently they're known for not lasting, that was what I read over at Allpar.

Bouts

Had Silverstars on the Intrepid, blew them regularly, about a year and one would go, no mods to the light circuit either

Jim Lane

Hey,
As you all know I have SilverStars on my truck and I get about 8 months on a set of lamps after one burns out the opposite side will go within 1 week like clockwork so I stagger the installation so I know that I will always have one working headlamp, Of all of the lamps that I have used so far the Silver Stars are the absolute brightest.

I bought a set of H-4 housings and modified my lamp buckets put them on but I did not like them at all because they all seem to have a flat cutoff that cuts all of the light output above the centerline of the lamp so you do not have anywhere the distance with these lamps.

I have not tried the Hella’s yet but I am sure they are the same.
There is no way that I would install an E-code housing besides the fact that they are illegal but I hate someone else’s blinding lights in my eyes so I would never do that to someone else out of simple road courtesy.

I will someday have a pair of HID’s on my truck as soon as I can get a good price on a pair of Sylvania Zenarc’s

I had the same question about the MTBF on the SilverStars so I e-mailed Sylvania with some questions.
Their reply is below:

Good Morning Mr. Lane,
Thank you for your inquiry. Our products are designed to operate
Properly between 12 and 12.8 volts, and can operate at up to 14 volts
for a short period of time, but if your vehicle is running at 14 volts
or higher for any amount of time, this can cause a part to fail
Prematurely. If your voltage is running at 14 volts or higher, I would
recommend that you have the voltage regulated to bring it back into the
correct range of 12 to 12.8 volts.

Unfortunately, we do not have any specifications that relate lumen
output to voltage. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any
other questions.

Sincerely,
Heather
OSRAM Sylvania
Customer Service

This was really nothing that I didn’t already know so I did some digging into their website and came up with some answers.

http://sylvaniaautomotivecatalog.wbd...nTechInfo.aspx

http://sylvaniaautomotivecatalog.wbd...y.aspx#weibull

My understanding is one of the ways that they get so many lumens from them is that they run them at the upper end of the voltage parameter resulting in a shorter life of the lamp.

He says the recommended voltage is 12.0 to 12.8 volts well geez that is my battery voltage with my engine OFF so as soon as I start my engine I am already exceeding the voltage by almost 2 volts so I built a voltage regulator for my headlamps to keep them closer to 14.0 volts and that seemed to have helped but I have noticed a loss in intensity.

If you want to see some really impressive lights, the run them at 15.0 volts they are so bright that they have a blue hue to them but they sure didn’t last very long.

Here is some data that I found in their website:
So this is why they burn out so quickly.

(Quote from Sylvania website)


5% overvoltage.

. Half the life
· 15% higher luminous flux
· 8% higher power consumption
· 3% higher current

5% undervoltage.

· Twice the life
· 15% lower luminous flux
· 8% lower power consumption
· 3% lower current

Not sure if you remember this but here is a video showing how bright my lights are.



SilverStars also last much longer on a stock vehicle (meaning no headlamp relays) because there is so much resistance in the factory circuit they are only being supplies with probably under 5-amperes because as sickly is the feed from the headlamp switch is headlamps are:

Low Beam 16-gauge
High Beam 14-gauge
Ground 20-gauge

Hope this helped answer some of your questions.
Jim