Headlight Conversions.

This statement is factually incorrect. There are countless bulb factories located all over the world that manufacture both OEM and aftermarket automotive bulbs. I can think of over a dozen in Europe alone, and more than four dozen in Asia (which is where 90% of all the pseudo-HID aftermarket [crap] bulbs come from). The fact that PIAA owns their own factory may be true but is immaterial since I have special bulbs made under contract with a handful of European ‘custom’ bulb shops that dramatically outperform those made by OSRAM and PHILIPS (the acknowledged and accepted leaders in miniature bulb manufacturing for the global transportation industry). So making your own bulbs means fairly little in terms of performance and reliability. Also, after almost three decades in the business I can’t recall a single instance where a PIAA bulb was even discussed much less used by an OEM for any project I’ve been a part of –or ever heard of. So if they’re so great, why don’t they market to the largest global consumer of automotive bulbs: the automotive OEM’s? The reason is because PIAA sells mainly to the aftermarket –where margins are fat and quality and performance is extremely SUBJECTIVE! Certainly, PIAA has earned a fairly good reputation for their products in the aftermarket, but let’s not automatically assume that that means they’re ‘the best’. One can define ‘the best’ a lot of different ways.

To say that they’re “THE top tier bulb maker in the world” is a statement of opinion, not fact. Be careful trying to disguise your opinions as fact. There are countless ways to dispute/refute your assertions about this one manufacturer. There is little doubt that PIAA makes some good stuff, but beating the drum (and other forum members) so heavily in favor of one single manufacturer over all others does not reinforce the credibility of your assertions, it really only categorizes you as a bully –thereby throwing into doubt the substance of all your remarks. It is always better to start each post with IMO (“in my opinion”). People listen more receptively to the humble than the loud! Of course, this is just my opinion!

 

It sounds like what you’re really saying is that ‘newer’ reflector optic systems that use ‘modern’ replaceable halogen bulbs are better than ‘older’ glass sealed beam optical systems with glass lenses that inherently contain a certain percentage of contamination (thereby affecting optical performance) and lower wattage bulbs that aren’t replaceable. If this is what you’re saying, then “yes” you are right that the newer systems are indeed better. However, it has almost nothing to do with the optical performance per-se. It has more to do with the quality of the molded lens, the molded reflector, the quality of the metallization on the reflector, the precision of the optical surface (be it in the lens or reflector), etc... Glass sealed beam lamps are notoriously poor quality and always have been.

yes that is the assertion. The optical performance difference is the result of the difference. Not to mention their placement when it comes to trucks in our industry, far above where they offer the most efficient angle of attack to the road.

As a veteran of countless OEM headlamp and tail lamp development lighting projects over the course of the last 27 years,

I wont tell you what most of the industry thinks of the engineers, I know the ones that design trucks have never seen one before.


I’ll tell you unequivocally why no OEM uses sealed beams any more: STYLING! That’s right, as soon as the Federal Government approved “composite” lamps for use on Federally maintained roads in the US in 1983, each OEM started the transition to composite lamps. This is because now for the first time in decades automotive stylists could design lighting that was unique to each particular vehicle’s styling theme –further differentiating them from their competition. That’s it, nothing else. It wasn’t aerodynamics because the very first few passenger cars in the US with composite headlamps (1984 Lincoln Mark VII; 1986 Ford Mustang SVO; 1986 Pontiac Grand Am) all had fairly flat lens faces –contradicting the assertion that aerodynamics played anything other than an ancillary role in the process back then (the aerodynamic benefits of designing composite lamps came later on). In the end (or ‘beginning’ as it were), it was purely a matter of cosmetics! For more background on this subject, please read the WIKIPEDIA article on automotive headlamp development found here. Also, you can find a pretty go history of automotive lighting prepared and published by UMTRI (University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute) that outlines the basic history of automotive lighting in the US since the advent of motorized transportation. It can be found here (.pdf download).

I never asserted that aero had anything other than a co-incedental side effect, not like a lot a cars intended for the NA market spend much time in a wind tunnel. Engineers have styled around sealed beams forever, Ferrari, Porsche, Ford etc have all styled true sealed beam assemblies behind clear shields right up until the newest generation mustang, or incorporated them into the lines of the design like Porsche. Again I agree the ability to style the assembly was a wonderful side effect of poly lenses. Also not being beholden unto to the lighting companies allowed the carmakers to control their tooling costs, so not only could they charge more for the styling, but do it cheaper. Money in the bank. Also keep in mind shipping costs by switching to the bulb type light company also save huge amounts of money not shipping a few thousand glass sealed beams but instead to hundreds of thousands of small bulbs for the same cost. This is why TVs are so cheap today, a pallet of tvs was 2, 4, 8 units back in the day, how many now guys? 10? 20? More?

This statement is factually incorrect. There are countless bulb factories located all over the world that manufacture both OEM and aftermarket automotive bulbs. I can think of over a dozen in Europe alone, and more than four dozen in Asia (which is where 90% of all the pseudo-HID aftermarket [crap] bulbs come from). The fact that PIAA owns their own factory may be true but is immaterial since I have special bulbs made under contract with a handful of European ‘custom’ bulb shops that dramatically outperform those made by OSRAM and PHILIPS (the acknowledged and accepted leaders in miniature bulb manufacturing for the global transportation industry)

I should have been more clear, companies that make bulbs are few. GE, Sylvania, Osram, Phillips being the big 4. Im sure that there are a ton of places cranking out highly specialized for things like the medical field, military, HID junk etc, and dont forget the 3rd world white box product, there is in every line of products. But as far as your generic found in NA for retail purchase 98% is being made by someone you have heard of even though their name is not on the box.

Ok you can have custom bulbs produced, with your stated position I guess you should. With enough money anyone can have their own prototype made as well. Why are those not marketed with all the ferver and zealousnous the market can muster? I'm guessing the cost at the moment outweighs the potential profit?

Also, after almost three decades in the business I can’t recall a single instance where a PIAA bulb was even discussed much less used by an OEM for any project I’ve been a part of –or ever heard of. So if they’re so great, why don’t they market to the largest global consumer of automotive bulbs: the automotive OEM’s? The reason is because PIAA sells mainly to the aftermarket –where margins are fat and quality and performance is extremely SUBJECTIVE! Certainly, PIAA has earned a fairly good reputation for their products in the aftermarket, but let’s not automatically assume that that means they’re ‘the best’. One can define ‘the best’ a lot of different ways.

OEMs are always reluctant to play in someone elses sandbox. Also they dont like to share the spotlight without the payoff. Thats why you see companies like ford looking to folks like Bilstien, Brembo, Sparco etc for equipment for their highend offerings, and you'll pay accordingly. The car companies are starting to notice that people are willing to pay for a premium product, and the aftermarket is one they have been missing out on huge portions. The margins are even more obscene when the car companies wont tell you what they are charging you. For example the maker of the TRD intake for my car sells it for about half what the dealer wants for it.

You should also know from your position that if a car company can get away with someone else doing all the R&D, providing the product under bid(this is huge, companies bid for contracts to provide parts - low bid wins), and getting no advertising OR paying per unit and paying advertising to tag the product with yours, the cheaper will always win. Car making is about money. Make it cheaper, sell it for more! None of the factories that moved from Cali to Tenn sold their cars for any cheaper.c

Fair enough the aftermarket as awash in crap no doubt. But as in any line cream always rises, they let their product do the talking and anyone else who uses them, I agree its subjective, but i'm on the front line. I believe they are the best because my cistomers tell me they are. Not every likes the price but everyone appreciates the improvement.

Show me someone who makes a better product, with a similar background geared towards doing one or two things and doing them better than anyone else, and I will preach their praises from the mountain top. They dont make filters or spark plugs or brakes. They do make wipers and high end wheels. Companies that put their eggs in one basket do it because they know themselves and their products. Compainies that continue to expand and diversify never do anything that well, just ask Chevy how Pontiac, Hummer and Saab are doing. Edelbrock makes intakes, carbs etc, they dont guarantee exact hp, but they know their product and it performs. PIAA is no different only their product is harder to qualify because of the perseptive differences, spoken of here at length.

I am a trade ticketed parts man. I went to school and trained under a Journeyman for 4 years, and am a Red Seal Certified Journeyman now. In fact I first certified under the old system where they only had Heavy Duty, I challenged my Red Seal and now my certification now includes automotive, marine and equipment. I have been in the industry for over 20 years in various capacities.

Cost, profit = these two things affect what appears in the stores, on tv, in your driveway. Safety, longevity, build quality are not even in the top five concerns concerns automotive companies nowadays.


Bottom line is I speak from real world experience, I'm no scientist, designer, or engineer. I build pulse-jets, fly-fish, play video games and tinker with anything with moving parts. I dont give alot of credence to talk, i like action and touch. If you come to my showroom I can show you how different forms of lighting with different light sources and all the benefits and advantages of each. We built it custom to demonstrate these different lights from a common base line. We can fill it with e-codes, led, hid, halogen, incandescant. Come by and i'll show you how the rubber hits the road, the real world cannot be simulated in your design lab.

 

but his one eye is better than tests.

yay, i was right...

 

Build it, test it. Thats what I use, real world, hands on. No BS. No charts. No rhetoric. See it, believe it.

Come by and load it with what ever you like.



Talk is cheap, perception is everything, come see for yourself.

 

xmas is over, pack away the green and red lights

 

Ok, good. I’m glad we got that straight because it sounded like you were flatly saying that reflector optics perform better then lens optics which simply isn’t true. I have countless examples of lens optics designs that outperform reflector optics designs. It just so happens that with the introduction of all these better materials and manufacturing processes used in lighting today came the introduction of the styling trend towards clear lens lamps. However, the two are simply coincident.

Ok, please don’t! And I won’t tell you how many operators I’ve dealt with over the years who have no concept of how challenging it is to design and engineer a product to meet strict and ever-increasing performance and durability requirements on ever-tightening budgets. In the end, engineering is the balance struck between cost and performance. If you’re looking for someone to blame for the things engineers produce that you don’t like, please call the Finance people. After all, they’re the ones who set the budgets that the rest of the development community has to live with –even when the stylists have sky-high expectations! BTW...If cost were no object -or- if there were no performance requirements, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation -either because you couldn’t afford the truck or I wasn’t needed to make something work properly.

I don’t understand this remark: Sealed beams were standardized -and thus sold to all vehicle makers by the hundreds of thousands off common tooling owned by the lampmaker(s). There was no out-of-pocket tooling expense for the OEMs in the days before composite headlamps. However, with ‘styled’ composite lamps it’s a completely different story: my last composite headlamp project in 2006 required almost $3.7 million in OEM-paid tooling (just for that project). However, my first composite headlamp project almost 25 years ago required only $400,000. That’s almost a 10 fold increase in tooling costs just so that these lamps can be uniquely styled to fit a particular vehicle theme! And now heavy tractor styling is going down the same road (so to speak).

Ok, I don’t know what this means: the North American bulb market is dominated by SYLVANIA (a division of OSRAM Germany), PHILIPS (a German company), and GE. Who are you implying is this mystery manufacturer behind the scenes?

BINGO! Most custom bulbs are made to satisfy very specific requirements on unique projects, but this comes at a cost. However, your comment did not speak to my original point, which is: that third party bulb manufacturers can produce bulbs with the same (or better) performance, quality, and durability as any of the others who make them in house -which you implied is one of the things that gave PIAA an edge. I’m saying that isn’t an edge. Also, I’ll bet you a cup of coffee that I can get my custom third-party bulbs made for less money than you could buy the same bulb made by PIAA! Don’t believe me? See what PIAA would sell you an H4 bulb with an IR coating on the glass capsule for. I pay a third party manufacturer $8.45 per bulb for this custom design and only buy 800 per year (extremely low volume). Also, this bulb produces 1,200 lumens on low beam (@ 55watts/12.8v) and 1,800 lumens on high beam (@ 60watts/12.8v). Also my manufacturer guarantees me 1,200 hours of low beam life and 800 hours of high beam life. That’s world class performance and life for under $10.00 each! Can your guy beat that?

 

Not sure what this means. Please explain.

Not sure what this means. Please explain.

AGREED! And so is the business of aftermarket bulb and lamp sales. People either agree with you or don’t based upon their OWN assessment of VALUE (value = cost vs. performance). PIAA charges a lot for their product –so one would naturally expect to get a lot from them. If they do then it’s a good value. If they don’t, then it’s not. We all just have to remember that ‘value’ is subjective and often based upon one’s own expectations and experiences!

For that reason I’m gonna try some for the first time in my own car(s) –despite their relatively high cost.

AGREED!

See, there in lies the problem: these products are not hard to qualify/quantify at all. ANYTHING CAN BE MEASURED! And the entire transportation lighting industry worldwide revolves around measurement ‘standards’ conceived, agreed-to, and set forth by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) –which includes experts from the all the world’s OEM’s, lamp makers, bulb suppliers, universities, scientists, etc... who have spent much of their careers developing standards and tests for evaluating bulb and lamp durability and performance. I myself have over 300 bulbs in a test lab this very moment burning around the clock to determine their life expectancy. So, you see, it’s not hard at all to qualify/quantify someone’s product if you really want to. Test results speak for themselves about a product’s real performance. In the end, bulb performance has very little to do with one’s “perspective”.

 

True!

Not true. Every project I’ve worked on in recent years has had an emphasis on those very things. Cars last 4 times longer today than they did in 1975, and automotive specifications are expanded every year to consider quality and life expectancy. It’s even been demonstrated very specifically here recently: In January 2007 the heavy truck industry was forced to adopt a fuel economy standard that forced the HT OEM’s to make substantial changes in their drivetrains. Some even used this as an opportunity to fully redesign their engines and drivetrains to meet that standard -making improvements that also resolved reliability problems that were too expensive to correct previously. Reliability and longevity are critical to a heavy truck owners or fleet operators who need their trucks to be operational around the clock. This is only somewhat less-true of the passenger car OEM’s.

In general I agree with your philosophy on this subject, and in principal I agree with a lot of what you’ve stated here in this thread. However, remember this debate started over your assertion that another guy was a knucklehead for not agreeing with you that PIAA lighting products were the best (I think your exact words to RZL-DZL were “Your ignorance of PIAA is not unexpected”), yet after he and I both requested test data (the industry standard for evaluating lighting) you replied with an invitation to visit your showroom. Well, shining a light on the wall (which is what I assume you’re doing) will never prove your point, only empirical testing on industry-standard photometry equipment with industry standard reporting methods can do that. If the light just looks brighter in your showroom, then you’ve totally missed the point here and therefore should offer your remarks only as ‘opinion’. Let’s also assume that if your product is truly superior you would never need to resort to back handed insults using words like “ignorance”. Regardless of how you think you meant it, it was an insult, and is no less insulting than if I said to you that your assertion that you think you can prove the superiority of your product in your showroom –without the aid of a goniometer or photometer, shows your ignorance of lighting as well. But I would never say that, because that would come across as condescending and insulting wouldn’t it?

And yes, the real world can absolutely be simulated in my design lab. I have performed countless correlative studies (third-party verified) that prove that my computers can and do predict real world driving conditions on any street anywhere in the world under any weather condition and with any light source. Can you do that in your showroom?

 

Now that we’ve beaten this subject to death, perhaps we should get back to the point:
40 year old glass sealed beam technology is crap and can easily be improved by using modern replaceable bulb (HB2/H1) systems. I myself use a set of BOSCH 1A/2A replaceable bulb lamps in one of my cars and am VERY happy with the performance improvement vs. the factory original glass sealed beams! It’s in this car that I will be evaluating a pair of the PIAA HB2 dual filament bulbs to see if they are indeed better than the OSRAM bulbs I currently use!

If you have a composite lamp, unfortunately –good or bad, you’re stuck with that optical system. The best thing to do is try some different bulbs to see what improvement can be had. Be careful not to use bulbs with wattages much higher than those specified by the factory because most lamps are designed close to the heat threshold of the bulbs they came with, so higher wattage bulbs will put you at risk for damaging your OEM lamps.

 

Instal a good hid in it and you'll be fine.