A few weeks ago, I was driving home from my regular pub quiz night... You can picture it... Wind, rain and dark, country roads.... I thought the road just looked a bit, well, dull!
When I got home, I confirmed that the dipped headlight bulb had blown.... So, the next day, once the rain had stopped, I replaced it with a spare bulb I had bought some time ago for this exact purpose...
Job done, I thought as I switched the lights on and did a full bulb test to make sure all was ok....
And, yes, the job was done... The car was legal again... All lights showing as they should....
But then I drove in the dark again... And I didn't think the road looked any brighter than it did before! So I checked the lights again.... Yes, all working...
It was now I began to wonder if I had got used to all of those bulbs that come with great claims for extra brightness that most of us would find hard to quantify....! 40% extra... 50% extra... And with price tags that are possibly exponentially inflated with the claims!!!
A little internet research, and a few tweets later, I had decided that I wouldn't mess about... Osram Nightbreakers claim an extra 90% at the same 55W.... That'd do me!
But, hang on a minute... The Passat takes 4x H7 bulbs for its dipped and highbeam headlights... This could get expensive! A quick (made all the briefer by the pain in the wallet!) search of the internet suggested more than £30 a pair.... Did I really want to spend £60 just to make the road a little brighter?
One more journey in the dark gave me the answer... YES!
So, I then dared to dive into ebay... and suddenly the prices didn't seem as extreme! In fact, roughly half as extreme!!!
I decided to buy from ebay seller wattbulb07 .... You can't generally argue with a 100% feedback rating...
The next day a package appeared......
So, £35 and a couple of damaged knuckles from the fitting, (that's a different story!), and the road ahead is, once more, a brighter place...
I guess this kind of thing may well sound trivial, certainly not as thrilling as driving the new Bentley or Aston, but in terms of road safety, and saving your eyes whilst driving at night, I find it money very well spent...
Of course, a lot of cars have clever headlight arrangements these days... HID, projector lenses, DLR, LED.... the technology and acronyms are endless... But if you go and put a "dull" bulb behind them, they might as well have candles!
Andrew Denyer
No comments:
Post a Comment