@somf69
If you get the right ones, you just get very white light, the same distribution as with the halogen bulbs. and it doesn’t blind the oncoming drivers. But you do get a lot more light on the road in front of you. I have LED conversions on both my Grand Caravan and our Sentra. They’re excellent. And I don’t have people flashing their high beams at me.
@somf69@werehatrack Yep. The key aspect is making sure the headlights are properly aimed – something not everyone does because of the extra time it takes.
@somf69@werehatrack So what light did you buy? My headlights are so hazed over that I am finally at the point I need to do something. I’ve already done the youtube fixes but that doesn’t last all that long.
@Kidsandliz@somf69@werehatrack
You need new headlight unit, where the bulb sits in. When that gets all hazy there’s no getting it out. It’s from years of condensation building up on the inside.
@Kidsandliz
I found some LED units on Amazon that had the emitters in the same location as the filaments of the halogen bulbs. The blades are flat with the emitters on the sides at the right distance to simulate the halogen’s output pretty well. As for the haze problem, for most popular makes and models, there are manufacturers in Taiwan selling complete units on eBay and Amazon at prices that are usually well under a hundred bucks per side. By comparison to the dealer’s $400 to $1300, the small difference in the light output distribution becomes no issue at all for me.
HID headlights. That awful bluish cast, always poorly aimed, bright as a sun.
The aftermarket HID units can range from yellowish to blue to greenish in light color, but yeah, the emitter location on the conversions is usually completely wrong. When the emitter is not lined up with the reflector correctly, no matter how bright it may be, the light’s not going to go where it’s needed; you can’t “aim” it because the light’s pretty much just going everywhere, not in the needed pattern. Plus, they often take several minutes to reach full brightness. Worse, many of them are one-beam-only so that if your vehicle uses one bulb for both hi and low beams, you lose one function altogether. And, of course, the one that “works” is just wrong in its results. (We won’t discuss how I know this.)
You need new headlight unit, where the bulb sits in. When that gets all hazy there’s no getting it out. It’s from years of condensation building up on the inside.
Actually, I can say from loads of experience that haze on the inside is rare; the yellowing and surface deterioration on the outside is almost always the problem, and while it can be polished off with temporarily stunning results, the clarity seldom lasts more than a few months. Once the plastic’s surface starts to degrade, the polymer chains will just keep on unraveling. Sometimes it is possible to apply a clearcoat with a UV blocker that slows the progress pretty well, but this often backfires and degrades the plastic faster instead.
Halogen. Instantly a thousand degrees. Don’t touch with your hands, handle like Faberge eggs. Oh, and they burn out next week. Thank goodness these little bastards are almost extinct.
@kostia Those safety-hazard torchiere halogens in particular. Even the revised designs, where they put a glass circle over the tube to keep the dust and dead bugs from settling directly on the hot element, still could ignite the debris that was sitting over the bulb. From “torchiere” to “torch” in 30 seconds.
@kostia
We still use those at work in our microscope lights. It’s funny that it needs a fan to cool the halogen that probably pulls more amps than the LED that could replace the whole fixture.
@PooltoyWolf
LED units whose power circuitry is crap. Which is about 95% of the LED conversion bulbs on the market, and 99.5% of the ones from China that aren’t sold under a known brand name that has a reputation to protect. (Do Not Get Me Started On Amazon Basics.)
@thebigtverberg I love my ceramic heaters. I have never had to replace one in 8 years and they are always on in the winter. Fortunately, snakes don’t need UVA.
@nasman6 I’m not really sure if those would work for reptiles or not. Most reptiles need UVB, though and that would just be UVA.
@PocketBrain Newer tubes have much less mercury, some claim zero. And if you swap to the electronic ballasts, the 120 cycle flicker goes away because the flash rate climbs to a far higher level that the human eye simply can’t sense. That’s why the CFLs don’t have a 120 cycle flash rate, too. In those, it’s typically closer to 20K/sec. Linear-tube electronic ballasts usually run around 5-6K/sec.
That said, the color gamut can be very wonky. I used to use a warm white small circline and a cool white larger one in my ceiling fixtures back in the day, as a way of getting a little closer to an actual daylight effect. It still wasn’t blue enough, but at least it was neither the depressing orange nor the weird green of just the one type.
Fluorescents that hum. Drives me crazy.
LED Headlights
@somf69 Oooo, yes.
@somf69
If you get the right ones, you just get very white light, the same distribution as with the halogen bulbs. and it doesn’t blind the oncoming drivers. But you do get a lot more light on the road in front of you. I have LED conversions on both my Grand Caravan and our Sentra. They’re excellent. And I don’t have people flashing their high beams at me.
@somf69 @werehatrack Yep. The key aspect is making sure the headlights are properly aimed – something not everyone does because of the extra time it takes.
@somf69 @werehatrack So what light did you buy? My headlights are so hazed over that I am finally at the point I need to do something. I’ve already done the youtube fixes but that doesn’t last all that long.
@Kidsandliz @somf69 @werehatrack
You need new headlight unit, where the bulb sits in. When that gets all hazy there’s no getting it out. It’s from years of condensation building up on the inside.
@somf69 HID headlights. That awful bluish cast, always poorly aimed, bright as a sun.
@somf69 Mis-aimed headlights of any kind.
@Kidsandliz
I found some LED units on Amazon that had the emitters in the same location as the filaments of the halogen bulbs. The blades are flat with the emitters on the sides at the right distance to simulate the halogen’s output pretty well. As for the haze problem, for most popular makes and models, there are manufacturers in Taiwan selling complete units on eBay and Amazon at prices that are usually well under a hundred bucks per side. By comparison to the dealer’s $400 to $1300, the small difference in the light output distribution becomes no issue at all for me.
@PocketBrain @somf69
The aftermarket HID units can range from yellowish to blue to greenish in light color, but yeah, the emitter location on the conversions is usually completely wrong. When the emitter is not lined up with the reflector correctly, no matter how bright it may be, the light’s not going to go where it’s needed; you can’t “aim” it because the light’s pretty much just going everywhere, not in the needed pattern. Plus, they often take several minutes to reach full brightness. Worse, many of them are one-beam-only so that if your vehicle uses one bulb for both hi and low beams, you lose one function altogether. And, of course, the one that “works” is just wrong in its results. (We won’t discuss how I know this.)
@Star2236
Actually, I can say from loads of experience that haze on the inside is rare; the yellowing and surface deterioration on the outside is almost always the problem, and while it can be polished off with temporarily stunning results, the clarity seldom lasts more than a few months. Once the plastic’s surface starts to degrade, the polymer chains will just keep on unraveling. Sometimes it is possible to apply a clearcoat with a UV blocker that slows the progress pretty well, but this often backfires and degrades the plastic faster instead.
The ones that don’t listen when I yell at them.
CFLs
@awk
Some of those are awful, some of them are pretty good.
Pretty much any that I buy at meh.
All four of them.
/image four lights
@mike808 You mean all five of them?
@mike808 @yakkoTDI
There. Are. NINE. Planets!
@mike808 @werehatrack
Burnt out lights.
@hchavers you said it!
Bud, Miller, and Natty…
@shahnm and Marlboro
@shahnm @sicc574 And “WTF is the point of that” Coors.
@shahnm @sicc574 @werehatrack
The best Coors I ever had was on tap at the factory in Golden Colorado.
Halogen. Instantly a thousand degrees. Don’t touch with your hands, handle like Faberge eggs. Oh, and they burn out next week. Thank goodness these little bastards are almost extinct.
@kostia Oh, I forgot about those.
@kostia Goddamn weird ones in our bathroom fixtures that are weird clip ins and one burnt out. Why are there so many kinds of bulbs?
@kostia Those safety-hazard torchiere halogens in particular. Even the revised designs, where they put a glass circle over the tube to keep the dust and dead bugs from settling directly on the hot element, still could ignite the debris that was sitting over the bulb. From “torchiere” to “torch” in 30 seconds.
@kostia
We still use those at work in our microscope lights. It’s funny that it needs a fan to cool the halogen that probably pulls more amps than the LED that could replace the whole fixture.
/giphy The Clapper
The diet food kind
The kind that claims to be super-long life but then burns out, requiring me to rip my entire microhood out of the wall to replace it.
@PooltoyWolf
LED units whose power circuitry is crap. Which is about 95% of the LED conversion bulbs on the market, and 99.5% of the ones from China that aren’t sold under a known brand name that has a reputation to protect. (Do Not Get Me Started On Amazon Basics.)
Strobe?
The dead lights.
Blonde highʟɪɢʜᴛs in short haircuts(aka “frosted tips”)… See 90’s & early 00’s boy bands
/giphy sunny
Honestly, the worst are heat lamps for reptiles. I swear, those things only last about 3 months or less.
@TheCO2 can’t you go to a restaurant supply and get heat lamps from there? Or no advantage?
@TheCO2
I went with cfl uv-b bulbs and ceramic heat bulbs for our turtle. They have both lasted over a year so far…
@thebigtverberg I love my ceramic heaters. I have never had to replace one in 8 years and they are always on in the winter. Fortunately, snakes don’t need UVA.
@nasman6 I’m not really sure if those would work for reptiles or not. Most reptiles need UVB, though and that would just be UVA.
Blue flashing lights in the rearview mirror.
@steeltoesenator It’s even worse when they are combined with red.
The kind that give me migraines.
Fluorescents. Flickery, weird color gamut, filled with toxic Mercury.
@PocketBrain Newer tubes have much less mercury, some claim zero. And if you swap to the electronic ballasts, the 120 cycle flicker goes away because the flash rate climbs to a far higher level that the human eye simply can’t sense. That’s why the CFLs don’t have a 120 cycle flash rate, too. In those, it’s typically closer to 20K/sec. Linear-tube electronic ballasts usually run around 5-6K/sec.
That said, the color gamut can be very wonky. I used to use a warm white small circline and a cool white larger one in my ceiling fixtures back in the day, as a way of getting a little closer to an actual daylight effect. It still wasn’t blue enough, but at least it was neither the depressing orange nor the weird green of just the one type.
Don’t walk toward the light.
Ones that run on alkaline.
The old incandescent bulbs on sigmoidoscopes. That’s somewhere you just don’t need heat.