On Wednesday, November 18, 2015 at 12:41:35 AM UTC-5, Califbill wrote:
wrote:
On Tuesday, November 17, 2015 at 5:23:04 PM UTC-5, wrote:
On Tue, 17 Nov 2015 14:03:57 -0800 (PST), wrote:

My old Audi burned out a headlight, and the stealership wanted $250 to
put a new bulb in. I bought the bulb off Amazon for about $50 and did
it myself in about 45 minutes. Had to remove the air filter box and
air pipe to the intake to get to the back of the headlamp, but it was no big deal.

I am still not sure what was wrong with the old sealed beam. You could
get them with very capable lamps in them just about the time they fell
out of fashion and anyone could swap one out for $5 in a couple
minutes.
I broke a headlight on my Honda and the replacement was over $100 used
and I got a deal. It was a pain to replace too.

The adaptive HID headlights on the newer, upscale cars are far superior
to old sealed beams. The replacements you are talking about, I believe,
are the housings. The actual bulb is inside and is small compared to an
old sealed beam. The housings are expensive, but the bulb inside is small
and relatively cheap. The nice sealed beams are a lot more than $5! The
good halogen replacements are more like $15-$30. The incandescent bulbs
are still $5-$10, but are weak and yellow.


But the older lights are not blinding to oncoming drivers.

The ones that are blinding are the ones that people have messed with, changing out the bulbs for different, brighter ones or a different temperature. Stock, at least on my car, they have a very noticeable cutoff so they shine down and out, but not up into oncoming traffic on low beam. On the garage wall there's a horizontal line about hood level above which there's no light output.