I'm surprised more Gen 3 owners don't use these. We've got them on our 1998 Accord, and we think highly of HIR bulbs. Subjectively, I think they do about 75% of what a mini-D2S projector retrofit does in terms of output, and HIR bulbs have better light throw than mini-D2S projectors.
These HIR bulbs are easily better than any PnP HID kit in terms of light thrown down the road because they use the stock reflector well due to
identically placed filament, minimal back-blinding foreground lighting, and solid full-spectrum white lighting that doesn't favor blue wavelengths.
This could be a stickie: 2005-2010 Gen 3 Headlight Upgrade.
The forum gets a number of queries on how to make the Gen 3 Odyssey lighting “better”.
By “better”, I think we’re all looking for similar deliverable results:
1. More lumens, i.e., brighter light output…but with decent bulb lifespan
2. DOT legal beam pattern per FMVSS 108 and your own state’s laws
3. White light to assist your own vision in detecting color contrast
4. Keep heat output to acceptable levels, similar wattage for stock wiring
5. Ease of installation
First, a little about your stock bulbs.
This is your low beam, which is a halogen 55-watt 9006 (HB4) bulb with an axial filament exactly where it needs to be for your stock reflector, and it produces about 1,000 lumens:
This is your high beam, a halogen 65-watt 9005 (HB3) bulb also with axial filament construction paired to your stock reflector, and it produces perhaps about 1,700 lumens:
These bulbs shown above meet and surpass minimum federal standards for illumination. However, more lighting within the current SAE-compliant beam pattern your van came with would be best.
You definitely want the entire visible color spectrum (white lighting) because it helps you visually identify items on dark roadways you don’t wish to hit (pedestrians, wildlife, other cars, cargo that fell off the truck in front of you, etc.).
So, “blue” bulbs are out, since they reduce your photopic vision’s ability to sort out separate colors in your visual field.
At a car show on a vehicle that is moved in a carrier? Fine. For road use? No way, blue bulbs are pretty worthless.
You want blue light? You can only achieve that by filtering out usable elements of the longer wavelengths in the visible spectrum to get a blue light from a tungsten filament bulb, thus reducing total output of lumens.
Again. A bulb with a blue quartz or glass envelope covering a given filament can never have the lumen output of a bulb with an identical filament inside a clear envelope (white lighting). Never.
To achieve the same lumens output in a blue bulb requires more power to the filament, with a serious reduction in bulb lifespan. No free lunch.
Also, blue is miserable for preserving dark-adapted vision (yours!) and blue light causes your distance estimation and depth perception suffers at night, where you need it most; however, you “feel” like you are seeing more, when in fact you are not.
So far, some of concerns I’ve read about on this and other forums, especially with PnP HID kits:
1. Too much light close to the bumper (severely degrades your distance vision)
2. Traffic citations
3. Wasn’t this supposed to come with a relay? Relays? (it’s cheap for a reason)
4. Why does the wiring have so few strands? (really cheap wiring)
5. Why is the wiring insulation so soft? (really cheap wiring x2)
6. Why the long, energized wiring runs without fusing? (really cheap wiring x3)
7. No schematic included. Can’t get one. Iffy customer support.
8. I can maybe file a piece of plastic. Install a kit? Not sure about that.
If we don’t want to upgrade the stock wiring or install any sort of kit, and if we want to keep the stock components and wiring and get appreciably more light output from the bone-stock headlight housing, here’s a solution like
eneka1 found:
9012 and 9011 bulbs with more output. Originally, GE patented the HIR technology where a coating that is transparent to visible wavelengths, but reflects only IR wavelengths, will reflect some of the IR radiation back to a seriously overbuilt filament, causing it to burn hotter and brighter. Since the power input is the same, the overall heat rejection measured against time is the same...in short, you will not cook anything using these bulbs.
Toshiba was licensed to manufacture these, and did sell these bulbs with a globe-shaped envelope for a number of years:
As far as I know, currently only Philips is licensed to produce these. These newer Philips HIR bulbs use a conventional tubular quartz envelope with no IR reflective coating like the older Toshiba bulbs, but use an even better filament and halogen gas mixture to achieve better photometric performance.
The 9012 (HIR 2, low beam) bulb uses 55 watts, and it can replace the Gen 3 Odyssey 9006 low beam. The filament length, orientation, and positioning are identical to the OEM 9006. The only difference is one tab on the base (more on this later). This Philips low beam HIR bulb produces about 1,800+ lumens, about an 80% increase in light output over the stock 9006 bulb.
That’s right, 1,800+ lumens. That’s more lumens from a 55-watt HIR bulb than the stock high beam bulb.
We installed a set of 9012 and 9011 bulbs in our 1998 Accord in the summer of 2012, and although we have not objectively measured for an 80% increase in light, the much better light throw in all areas of the beam pattern is very noticeable. Over 3 years of use and they are still working very well.
The 9011 (HIR 1, high beam) bulb uses 65 watts, and it can replace the Gen 3 Odyssey 9005 high beam. The filament length, orientation, and positioning are identical to the OEM 9005. The only difference is one tab on the base (more on this later). This Philips high beam HIR bulb produces about 2,300+ lumens, or about a third more lumens than the stock 9005 bulb.
To me, the single most cost-effective upgrade is changing the pair of regular 9006 low beam bulbs to 9012 bulbs. But, I did say there is the matter of the one tab on the base. The 9012 and 9011 bulbs will not replace their respective 9006 and 9005 brethren unless you do one slight modification to this specific top-oriented mounting tab. Here it is:
I know what you're thinking.
jangelj wanted to know if the much, much higher output 9011 (HIR 1, high beam) bulb can fit in our 9006 low beam socket. Let's see.
First, that tab can be trimmed to match a 9006 low beam architecture, but the problem is the bulb housing diameter. It's smaller, the O-ring will not seal, and therefore it is not weatherproof.
Can I make it weatherproof? Maybe. I measured these with a micrometer, and an O-ring that is 1-mm bigger in cross-sectional dimension should make the 9011 (HIR1, high beam) bulb fit snugly in the Gen 3 Odyssey low beam socket. The Odyssey has a shield to prevent blinding, the 9011 bulb is also an axial filament in the same location as the stock 9006 low beam bulb, so it has great odds of working, with an SAE-legal beam pattern.
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