Also ran a pair of Super Plasma bulbs in my Toyota and after 4 warranties, PIAA said that was it.
OEM HID takes this into account and are safe but after market upgrades are not.
Use GE Nighthawks. Best light you can buy for the money $25/bulb or so, at crappy tire/partsource.
Once you sort through the ton of marketing stuff you will find this out, hopefully I can save some others the time:
Lights like PIAA or any other light that has coloring in the glass cut out some (ie. a fair bit) of the light that helps you see. While it makes the light look whiter by filtering out some of the yellow light and tricks us into thinking their is more light, in truth any filter in the glass cuts down on the amount of available light getting to the road. Clear bulbs like the nighthawks give more light per watt.
Even thought you may think you are getting more light with bulbs filtered towards the blue end of the spectrum, in reality you can see yellow light better than blue light anyway (humans have evolved to see yellow better because of the slightly yellow sun), and with no coloring in the glass, ALL the light possible is getting on the road. If you really do a side by side, you will find clear bulbs will help you see further. I did a little reading on this and my personal experience supports it. Contrast is better with yellow light as well, blue light tends to make things a little more flat. Think about it...many people use yellow filters in their visors/goggles to help them see contrast better on white snow right? Contrast is very important when the stupid deer runs out in front of you.
That being said, the nighthawks are hardly yellow looking, they look much whiter than OEM, but not white/blue like the other brands.
The second problem with most expensive after market bulbs is that they are running at a higher wattage. I think all piaa bulbs are 100W. While this does give you some more light and maybe even more light on the road then other 55W bulbs in spite of the colored filter, the problem is they may overheat your OEM wiring and or your head lamp assembly (read as likely). Or, you may get a voltage drop, resulting in a cooler filament and less white light anyway with a higher wattage bulb. I don't know if you have checked out OEM wiring these days but they are just barely thick enough to handle the OEM 55W lights, never mind higher wattage lights. And trying to upgrade OEM wiring on new trucks is like trying to do hard math, with all the circuitry in place to detect bulb failures and daytime running lights. Life is too short.
My personal opinion is that silverstar are significant improvement over OEM and that GE nighthawks are a significant improvement over silverstar, having run both in several vehicles, the GE nighthawks win hands down. I also find that GE Nighthawks are about as bright as other people want to tolerate as well, having upgraded my OEM fog lamps to GE nighthawk bulbs the irritation of other drivers is markedly up. I find many after market HID lights to be downright rude and unsafe, blinding on coming traffic (ie. me).
Keep in mind one of our limitations (really going on a rant here) with north american automobile light is that DOT in the US and Industry Canada require ALL automotive lighting to have fluting in the lens to scatter about 40% of the light all over the place (ie. not on the road) so that all the road signs can be lit up. Not to mention sending light were you don't want it with driving lights and fog lights scattering light all around, but when you modify OEM lighting with stupid bright HID lights, you are sending a lot of "way to bright light" into other drivers eyes even on low beam.
That being said, I do run 100W bulbs in my driving lights, but then my driving lights have a metal reflector, glass lens and can take the heat, and I have heavy wiring on them and a dedicated relay/power source. I just put lowly $7 100W H3 bulbs in them and yes they are very bright and very irritating to others even way far out if I forget to dim them. But then so are the stupidly aimed OEM fog lights on most trucks now, mine included.
What does that guy on TV say? "Why spend more, Save-your-money..."
Congrats to all that read this far. You deserve a cookie or a
NOW, ARE THERE ANY BANKERS ON HERE THAT NEED CASH "CLEANED", OR INTEREST FREE LOANS - LOL J/K
